Under a Charcoal Sky
by Heaven's Eagle
Summary: Dean Winchester and the angel Castiel. They never should have been there, but Purgatory still learned to fear them. [Chronicles of the goings-on of Purgatory. Rated T because Winchester and monsters. NOT a Destiel fic]
1. So We Flee on Arrival

**Pleased to thank Molly-Myles for her excellent Beta work on this.**

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It was, as it always was, the nightmares that kept Dean alert. Factually, he knew that his life should scare the living crap out of him. He himself had, on many occasions, pointed this out; to his brother, to strangers, to overzealous victims. But the honest truth, regardless of whether he chose to admit it, was that his life – the constant battle against death, brutal odds, the forces of both the Attic and the Basement – did not frighten him. The things that frightened Dean Winchester made a very short list, and _monsters of the night _did not make the cut.

As far as Castiel had ever made out, the list was limited to the following:

_1. Losing his brother, Sam._

_2. Returning to Hell._

_3. Failing his self-assumed duty and letting the Earth be obliterated._

Castiel knew all of this, because Castiel knew Dean. Though the human had never dwelt on the matter, when Cas had dragged Dean's soul (broken and loathsome though it had been) from the pit of Hellfire it had been trapped in, he had seen into parts of the man that Dean himself refused to acknowledge. To human eyes, the burn of Castiel's touch had faded from Dean's shoulder, but to the angel it still glowed, forever branded upon his soul. It was evidence of that bond, of Castiel's dive in damnation. No matter that the humans were so blind, the celestial creatures could see the claim that Cas had laid on Dean's soul, the part of his Grace that would never leave it.

Until recently, Castiel had felt safe in adding his own name to the list, that Dean feared losing him too. But it was all broken now. There was no affection in his words anymore, and Castiel could not detect the comfortable patterns in his thoughts that had previously accompanied their shared companionship.

It was hard to think this way, for the angel. His mind was aeons old, and moved much faster than the human concept of time allowed for, but what had once been sharp as a blade was dull, and full of madness. The scarlet floodlight that filled Castiel's head now was not his own, but it affected him as if it were. That was the price that he had paid to free Sam Winchester of his mistake, although it made little difference to him now. All thought, all emotion melted under the intense crimson flames, bubbling like flesh drenched in acid.

Occasionally, Castiel would skim through the part of his mind that remained intact, the tiny clearings of rational thought that allowed him to understand fully his dire situation, and the guilt that rested on his wings. Burned into Dean's entire being as it was, it came as no surprise to the angel that the rational parts of himself resided close to the human.

Now, he was very close to Dean though his rationality was questionable. When he had agreed to this farce, he had suspected he was wandering the edge of a clearing, only partially lucid to his reasoning. Whatever his motivation had been for accompanying the Winchesters on their way to end the Leviathan King, he could not remember now. His vision wasn't entirely clear, though the grotesque visage of the monster before them was unmistakable.

Had he not been divine in origin, Castiel may have said that the Leviathan King's face was oddly attractive. Not in the sense that humans seemed to understand, but in a more literal fashion; twisted and jagged though it was, it could have held a sort of fascination to the fallen and insane angel, drawing him closer for more thorough inspection. Castiel was, nevertheless, divine in origin, and his Grace – warped though it had become, cut through with bleeding red scars and pitted with the dark stains born of his fall – kept his eyes clear of such deception. The Leviathan (King or otherwise) was an ugly creature to behold, and Castiel wished with every ruined part of himself that he could not see past the vessel, the form it had chosen.

The creature, teeth glistening in its eerily angled face, the face that Castiel saw so clearly behind the human façade, was grinning. Understanding was a blurred concept to Castiel, his thoughts so defiled by the constantly pulsing red light, but the sight filled him with a horrible sensation. It was one he couldn't quite place, one that had been utterly foreign to him before his rebellion, before his fall. It was a feeling that _oozed_, slowly enveloping his entire being, vessel, Grace and all.

No, Castiel certainly did not understand it, and what he wanted more than anything was to 'blip out', as the Winchesters had termed his flight, to flee the terrible creature. He could almost hear the buzzing of insects, so beautiful and uncomplicated that they were. Bees, in particular, were of much interest to the angel. They were so tiny, on their own, and yet somehow they each performed a small task that added up to such perfection. That such a horde of individuals could act so completely as one being and produce that which had not previously existed – this being honey, concerning the bees – was incredible. It seemed to dull the cruel scarlet in his mind, bringing him a small measure of peace and the pleasant white that he used to think with; diluted to a sickly pink.

However, he could not leave. The tattoo of his old Grace was scorching on Dean's shoulder, blistering white filtered with cold blue. His thoughts, as they were, wrapped around it, the fragment of what he had once been, and the man that it was attached to. Protecting Dean had always been his foremost concern, ever since the moment he had been risen from perdition.

Angels didn't have souls, not in the way that humans thought of them, not in the nuclear-explosion-waiting-to-happen way. But in the same manner, humans did not have Grace. To an angel, their Grace equalled a human's soul. When Dean's soul, raw and unbridled by physical form, had been gripped by Castiel – Grace at full force and surrounding him in a protective veil, preventing him lasting harm from Hell's fire – they had touched. A piece of Castiel would always be present within Dean, and though it was not the same, the imprint of Dean's soul would never fade from Castiel.

In a way, protecting Dean was protecting himself, but it was more than that. Dean and Castiel's bond was rare and unrivalled. It was almost base instinct to the angel. Castiel's Grace equalled Dean's soul, and vice versa. And that light, that brilliant star that was contained in the fragile skin and flesh of humanity, was threatened.

So it was when the Leviathan, arrogant and sure its own victory, stepped towards Dean. Cognitive thought was beyond Castiel's capability, but Dean was in danger and he stepped forward. No matter the cost, Castiel would protect Dean, would prevent as much harm as possible. It went beyond his friendship. Rescuing souls from Hell had been prohibited of the angels for uncounted centuries. Had the red light allowed him to, Castiel would have understood why, now. Angels and humans were never meant to bond in that manner.

He had no weapons, and he could not even see properly beyond the faces of his enemy, but Castiel moved more quickly than his human vessel was otherwise capable of, his Grace demanding the strain of the flesh. Before the Leviathan could lay a hand on Castiel's human, he was right there, in the way.

And then, with a flash of white tiles and pain, he was not. The boxes broke underneath his body – rather, Jimmy's body – and ill-informed pain tried to invade his nervous system. Oxygen rushed out of the delicate lungs, and Castiel could have cursed the need for air that he had within Jimmy's form. But every sense that was his own – the galaxies of sensation that existed outside his vessel, that stemmed from the creature he truly was, wings and all – strained towards Dean, and the part of himself that was still pure.

By the time that Castiel could see once more, all of his visions full of red static, the Leviathan was extracting a bone from its chest. Castiel's divine senses informed him of the sins that lay upon that bone, neither righteous nor dangerous. It snapped with a resounding _crack_, and he flinched because his vessel was accustomed to that reaction.

Something important swam through the crimson sea in his mind. That bone had not been the powerful weapon that the Winchesters had prepared. Cas could see it even now, being revealed by Dean to the hastily triumphant Leviathan, spotless and just.

Hands moved, muscles flexed, and Castiel wrenched back on the Leviathan's hair, forcing an opportunity. Leviathan may be able to slaughter angels on a whim, but Castiel's strength was not to be scoffed at. Exposed like that, and taken off guard by the diversion, the Leviathan King could not react in time to stop Dean. The true weapon, soaked in the blood of the fallen, pierced the creature's throat and held.

Castiel did not see the expression on the Leviathan's mortal form. He only saw the nauseating rage that turned an already monstrous visage into something that Castiel may have seen in nightmares, were he capable of experiencing them. It literally pulsed from the King, entwined with its death throes.

The air shimmered with the creature's power, so much so that even the humans observed it. And even then, the Leviathan grinned in cruel victory and Castiel knew – the lucidity exploding in his mind like holy fire – that they had miscalculated. In some way that they had not foreseen, Castiel and Dean and Sam had been gravely mistaken. And now, they would pay the price.

Finally, the enemy died, its terrible form disintegrating with a mighty noise and the splatter of black.

Castiel was dizzy, when he found he could see again. For just a moment, the parts of him that were not all angel won out and he stumbled, dropping to the ground. He had felt the slight pangs of nausea before, when he had found himself in the presence of the archangels, but this was a different sensation. For a second, he found himself wondering whether he might experience vomiting.

However, the dizziness passed and as his vision steadied, Castiel became aware of several things. First and foremost, he savoured the slightly unfamiliar way his thoughts aligned themselves in sleek clarity. Whatever the madness was he'd lifted from Sam, whatever the red floodlight that had corrupted his mind, it was gone. For the first time in a while, Castiel found he could think clearly. It was this which allowed him to fully comprehend how dire his situation currently was. Without the crimson haze clouding his senses, he could already pinpoint the souls around him, and none bar one were friendly.

Most of them, oily and hungry though they felt against his Grace, were of a lesser concern to him. It was the black ones, sharp and ravenous and already nipping at his Grace, that worried him. More than that, if he was honest; there was a spike of fear in his belly that Cas was unaccustomed to feeling.

He had always wondered why taking a vessel had been criminalised before he had rescued Dean, but he thought he knew better now. Remaining within flesh, being bound by bones and chemicals… No matter how one's Grace protected one, eventually aspects of humanity took root. Emotions became stronger, goaded by physical responses that angels alone lacked. Of all the emotions Castiel was forced to accept, fear was one of the ones he loathed the most. It was an emotion that stripped him of logic.

The fear that the black souls inspired in him was in and of itself terrifying. The urge to flee was almost overpowering.

"Dean," he called out quietly, trying to attract as little attention as possible. It did not matter what actions he took, Castiel's Grace was so alien to this place that it felt pure in comparison, even though Cas knew it to be anything but. Castiel himself was a beacon, a seraph, divine, in a place of such unparalleled corruption. Anything would find him. Everything would find him.

And the Leviathan were the most dangerous creatures to reside here. That they even did informed Castiel of precisely where they were. If the malicious atmosphere hadn't been clue enough, he could sense no human life, nor angelic life, nor even demonic.

Purgatory was a dangerous place for monsters. Castiel could only imagine what they might want to inflict upon a human. But an angel would be an even greater prize, should they catch him. Most of the monsters here posed little threat to him, but the Leviathan were an entirely different matter. Already, they were closing in, their aura of fear preceding them. And Castiel, he realised, had just aided in slaughtering their King. The bounty on him would be immense.

"Wake up," he tried, walking closer to the man. Dean lay on the ground, surrounded by leaf litter. Extending in every direction around them stood bare trees, skeletons of themselves in the darkness. And above their heads, stretching beyond even Castiel's eyes, a blank sky, dark and empty as a slate.

Dean's eyes opened, and he sat up slowly, taking in their new environment. Whether in response to that or whether he could miraculously sense the danger they were in, Dean's emotions tightened. "Good," Castiel said, knowing that Dean couldn't read his mind, and feeling the need to verbalise his relief that the human was able to run for himself. The Leviathan were still closing in, and though other souls with evil intentions were far closer, even they would flee should the black creatures arrive. "We need to get out of here."

Dean would go nowhere without information, and Cas was painfully aware of that. He could feel his heart rate accelerating (a strange human sensation that still seemed so illogical to him) in reaction to the terror creeping through him. Just once, Castiel hoped that Dean would run first, and demand answers when they were safer.

But alas, as Dean stood and looked around him in cautious confusion: "Where are we?" His words came out in puffs of steam in the increasingly icy air.

Cas was honestly surprised. Dean was a highly intelligent person, and surely even he, though human, could sense the malevolence that surrounded them. At the very least, he had expected Dean to have an idea of what had happened. "You don't know?" he replied, seeking confirmation. Surely, Dean was toying with him.

Of all the times for Dean to use his 'sarcasm', if that was what was occurring, now was less than ideal. The Leviathan – three of them, Castiel guessed – were nearly upon them, greedy, and their fearful aura was even starting to affect Castiel's respiratory functions.

"Last I remember, we ganked Dick," Dean informed him, his eyes flickering slightly in what Castiel had come to recognise as confusion. Reading emotions wasn't difficult, thoughts and motivation even easier, but five years in a human body had taught Castiel how to read body language. Frankly, though, Cas had no patience left for Dean's humanity.

The Leviathan were close, and death was at their heels. "And where would he go in death?" he countered, wordlessly demanding that Dean use his own, always surprisingly sound logic.

Dean's eyes narrowed, filthy brown in Purgatory's ominous gloom, and he hesitated for a moment. He was going to question the conclusion he'd clearly just arrived at, and Castiel quickly prepared the right words to cut across with. _They didn't have time._

"Wait, are you telling me th—"

"Every soul here is a monster," Cas confirmed, and he was unable to not look off to his right. The Leviathan who had already found him had joined forces, and the fear was almost like a battering ram against Castiel's protective Grace. "This is where they come to prey upon each other for all eternity." Perhaps a little unnecessary of him, but Dean was wasting far too much time. Castiel felt marginally better adding the words when Dean clearly needed nothing else.

He regretted it, just a little, when he heard the horror in Dean's voice. "We're in Purgatory?"

A rustling drew both their attention to the side. A creature – a soul that was almost insignificant to Castiel's mind – had come close enough to trigger the human senses they had, both fleeing the Leviathan and hunting them.

"How do we get out?" Dean demanded, and Cas heard the slight indication of caution turning to fear in the words.

But the idea was ludicrous. Purgatory had been created by his Father to keep things in, to cage beasts that could annihilate the rest of Creation. On their own, they were not getting out. _Leviathan_ could not escape without outside help. What prayer had they of accomplishing that? Out of respect for the impossible things that Dean Winchester had done before, Castiel kept the absolute certainty of failure out of his words. "I'm afraid we're much more likely to be ripped to shreds," he said instead, looking around sharply. The rustling was on both sides now, small little creatures that only smelled food.

They did not alarm him.

He could see, from the expressions on Dean's face and the thudding of his mind, that they _did_ alarm the human. But even the low growl, something that may have caused the angel pause once, did not. Dean turned to look at the sound's source, fear and trepidation obvious in his slightly lowered posture, and Cas felt a spark of sorrow.

Smothered by the fear, and feeling it truly touch him as the Leviathan's proximity finally punctured his Grace, Castiel did the only thing he could think of. He had known that this course of action was coming, but he had hoped to tell Dean more before it became necessary. If only Dean hadn't asked questions. By now, he could not protect the human. He would be lucky to make it out of the confrontation alive himself. The growls of the smaller creatures did not bother him. Castiel was more than confident that Dean could defend himself against those souls, and even more so with them contrasted against the Leviathan.

Castiel fled, teleporting as far as he possibly could, allowing the Leviathan to feel a flash of his wings as he passed them by. He had to ensure they followed him. But he also didn't want to fight, because Castiel would surely lose.

Dean could survive the creatures he was met with. They were weak, nothing in the shadow of the Leviathan. If Cas had stayed, then they would have died. Both of them. And somehow, even in Purgatory, the thought of Dean dying set Castiel's wings ashudder.

He landed in a flurry of movement, the speed of his flight sending the fallen leaves into a tornado around him. But the Leviathan were fast, faster than he had ever anticipated, and their surrounding fear drove into him even as the foliage settled. Breathing deep, Castiel stretched his immense black wings wide again and picked an arbitrary direction. Fleeing anywhere away from Dean was good. In the distance, he could still sense the human's soul, beating faintly in the otherwise sea of evil.

Taking off in the opposite bearing to Dean, Castiel flew as far as he was able once again, covering more distance than the Earth could boast. Still, it wasn't enough. Already, Dean's soul-signature faded from his senses, and after a third bound Castiel no longer knew for certain which direction he should fly in.

And the Leviathan tracked him angrily, further away now but still giving chase. For hours, until the charcoal slate of the sky began to lighten into an endless expanse of cement-coloured cloud, Castiel flew away from the creatures hunting him, until he was utterly disoriented and his wings were sore. Every time he even thought he sensed Dean, Cas fled in the opposite direction. He could not lead the Leviathan back to the human. Dean would surely die if he did.

It seemed that even in Purgatory, Castiel did not require sleep, for he was not tired when he finally landed safely, finding that he had lost his pursuers, but he was weary. Never in all his thousands of years had Castiel fled so far and so fast as then. He had not even known it was possible for his wings to ache the way they did now.

Keeping his Grace wrapped tight around him, trying to make it as small as he could, hoping he attracted less attention that way, Castiel approached a stream and knelt. The water was clear, as pure as possible in a place as wrought with sin as Purgatory. Though Castiel did not _need_ to do so, he cupped his hands and drank slowly, savouring the icy chill that the liquid brought to his sore body. How strange, that he should keep the form of his vessel even here, though both he and Dean (and the thought turned the pleasant chills painful) were technically dead once again.

Castiel stayed where he was for several hours, straining his senses as far as he dared with his Grace as much under lockdown as was possible. Once, an unwary werewolf soul wandered too close, mesmerised by the shine of the seraph's presence, but Castiel sent him into oblivion without any difficulty.

Soon after that, he thought he felt a flicker of darkness on the fringe of his senses. He could see nothing, hear nothing, but the discomfort touched him, and he tasted a bitter flavour not unlike gasoline on his tongue.

Castiel couldn't be sure that he had truly sensed a Leviathan, but he daren't take the risk. Unfurling his wings in the span of a heartbeat, he flapped and was gone from the stream, fleeing even the possibility. Eventually, he reasoned, he'd have to let one of them find him. The alternative was that they give up and begin to hunt Dean, and Cas couldn't stand that. At least the angel had a chance of outrunning them. If they decided to chase the human, then Dean was as good as eaten.

The area in which Castiel appeared was not as far away from the stream as his previous flights had been, but it was still a significant change in scenery. Sheer cliffs rose to his left, a rusty brown colour, and a field of dead grass continued out to his right.

A collection of boulders lay scattered around the base of the cliff, and Castiel tripped and stumbled his way over to them, unfamiliar with the action of running. Normally, when he went anywhere in haste, he teleported, but the use of his wings was almost as bright a beacon as use of his Grace, and so he ran. The celestial being somewhat suspected that he would very quickly get used to running.

Once he was hidden in the boulders, ensuring that no soul would find him by physical sight, he allowed himself to relax just a tiny iota. Nothing was trying to kill him at that very second, and he could stand to think for a minute.

Perhaps he shouldn't have left Dean like that. Considering his departure, Castiel began to feel a little guilty. Dean didn't know why Cas had vanished without explanation. Clearly he had not been able to sense the approach of the Leviathan. He would probably be angry. And if Cas knew Dean (and he did), then the Hunter would not stop cutting his way through Purgatory until he found the angel. They might have had their problems, but Cas was the only thing that Dean knew in this place, and so Dean would search him out.

Until that day, however, Castiel resolved to keep moving, to stay ahead of the Leviathan, and to ensure that they caught his scent just often enough that they did not remember Dean.

For the rest of what passed as day, Castiel moved from place to place, never staying more than a few hours anywhere for fear of discovery. Occasionally, he would be forced to smite a vampire or a werewolf or any other monster that dared get too near, but most of the time they did not dare, and Cas did not remain long enough for them to do so.

Soon enough, the sky began to darken once again. It did nothing to erase the gloomy luminosity that lit Purgatory, but everything did seem somehow darker under that blank slate sky than it had beneath the concrete one.

Castiel did not require sleep, but he knew that the Leviathan slept sometimes, so he felt safe enough to remain longer during the mockery of the night. He had settled amidst a jungle, full of trees and swamps and the more dextrous of monster. At that moment, he was seated halfway up a large tree, leaning against the thick trunk. All too soon, he would learn not to sit anywhere, but it was not something he yet understood.

It was then that he heard it, faint and ghostly in his ears; but even though Dean was beyond his senses, a prayer was a prayer no matter where uttered, and Castiel had no choice but to listen.

_Uh, Dear Castiel, I have no idea where you are, but some company would be really nice right about now. I, uh, I got torn up pretty good by those gorilla wolf bastards, so, heh, you think you could zap on over and give me a hand, buddy?_

There was no goodbye, no signing off as most people did when they prayed. For most people, praying was a devout experience, something they did out of love and faith. But as ever, with Dean, he viewed prayer as nothing more than a mode of communication; a way to contact Castiel when he was beyond all other means.

When he had first learned the expression, Castiel had been confused by the metaphor _'my insides twisted'_. He understood that it was designed to convey panic, or anxiety, but it had never seemed to quite connect with the words. Now, he thought he knew why. Both emotions flared in his chest, upon hearing that Dean _had_ had trouble with the souls, that he was injured, and it did almost feel as if the flesh in which he still mysteriously resided twisted upon itself.

How strange it was to him, even after all this time, that emotion could warp physical sensation so.

But Cas did not dare answer the prayer, and after a minute the gentle tug that told him where it came from faded. If he complied with Dean's request, then the human would surely die.

The Leviathan were not quite as many as they had believed. Purgatory was unimaginably vast, even for the angel's mind. But being near Dean was a risk. No matter how small, it was too much of a risk for Castiel to take, when the spoils was Dean's life.

And for weeks, Castiel continued in this manner. Flying all around Purgatory, until his wings were constantly paining him, never staying in one place for more than a few hours. The nights were better, because the Leviathan were less active, and the only things foolish enough to approach him were easily smote. But they were worse, in a way, because every night, without fail, Dean would pray to him, and Cas would fight the urge to respond. At the very least, Castiel comforted himself with the fact that every prayer was another day that Dean had survived; and the Hunter was practical enough that he always informed Cas of his condition.

It was, perhaps, unusually considerate of the man, but Castiel took the news gratefully. Though he knew Dean must worry about him in return, at least he would know should something happen. And without the ability to fly, Dean would always be relatively easy to find, given that Cas always knew where he was at nights. The human couldn't travel that far in a single day.

As it turned out, keeping the Leviathan interested in him proved far easier than Castiel had originally assumed. They were far more skilled at finding him than that first night would have suggested, and by now every single one of them was on the hunt for the seraph.

For weeks more he continued like this. Sleep he did not need, but even angels were habituated to periods of rest, and Castiel knew that eventually he would slip up. It was draining, constantly being on the lookout, continuously keeping his Grace under tight reign. Already, slivers of his power escaped his control, and they were practically guaranteed to bring Leviathan running. Eventually, he would need to stop, to let his Grace roam outwards and his senses roam inwards, and then he would be truly exposed. As of yet, Castiel had not thought of a good solution to that problem.

But all in good time, he supposed. Soon enough, he would have to fly. For now, he settled back against his heels (as relaxed as he could be, still poised for flight), and awaited Dean's nightly prayer.


	2. To Pray a Little Different

**Once again, wonderfully Beta'd by the spectacular Molly-Myles. Go read her stuff. Now. Yes, now.**

**This chapter is dedicated to snseriesfan. Thanks for your awesome Review! =)**

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Sincerely, Dean would have liked to say that the first night had been the worst. It had certainly been awful; his shoulder apparently made a good chew toy to crazy gorilla-wolf freaks, and he'd been stranded, cold and alone and bleeding. Dean had left a trail behind him, too, formed from drips and smears of blood the loss of which was beginning to make him dizzy.

It had been a long day, once he had slain his attackers, limping through the seemingly endless forest. Hours had passed, a thick blur of pain and fear and his pulse against the handle of the demonblade.

Eventually, his injured body had given way, as he'd known it would. He collapsed against a tree, ignoring the rough scrape of the bark against his back. Dean could hear the ripple of running water nearby, though, and that gave him a measure of hope. Running water should be clean, and clean water meant he could drink and clean his wounds. More than anything, more than he was tired or sore, Dean was thirsty.

It took several agonising minutes, but he was able to make his way to the tiny brook, falling languidly over its pebble bed. The Hunter had expected moss, but like the trees around him, the rocks were utterly devoid of life. It seemed nothing grew here, beyond the ominous trees.

Once sated, Dean settled himself at the edge of the water, ignoring the chill of his wet clothes, and he carefully peeled off his jacket, and the t-shirt under that. It hurt, where the fabric had dried to his open flesh, and ripped apart the wounds as he pulled, but he doubted that Purgatory would do _anything_ but get worse.

Always worse.

Shirtless, Dean twisted around, trying to assess the lacerations that he had received. Not good. The claws had torn straight through his shoulder, severing the muscle that joined it to his neck, and continued down to his shoulder blade. Other claws – or perhaps they had been teeth, he could no longer recall – had punched holes in his triceps. Underneath the fiery pain of his shredded shoulder, Dean could feel the much pleasanter burn of Cas' now-invisible handprint. The sensation came back, occasionally, when he was hurt.

The water stung when he poured it over the slashes, but he'd rather the icy sting than an infection. If he'd been so easily hacked apart by the monsters, who knew where else those claws had been?

An hour later, Dean was to be found half concealed among the roots of a monstrous tree, knife held across his knees. He was dressed once more, and mostly dry, though his shirt still clung to the wounds, sticky with blood. Until they were scabbed solid, Dean didn't risk too much movement, and had decided to remain close to the brook.

This decision left him with a question, however: Where the _hell_ was Cas? Above all, even knowing that he had lied before, Dean trusted that the angel had a good reason for skipping out on him.

Not even Castiel would leave him with a bunch of rabid, mutant hybrid monsters… Right?

The cold came first. Despite the appearance of endless forest, the temperature shifted like a damned desert; the day, wherein the sky boiled with steel clouds, was hot beyond belief, draining Dean's energy far faster than he could afford. But as night fell and the sky charred to starless coal, the cold set in. Dean's breath misted in front of him, and he welcomed more than ever the heat of his old scar. Funny, he supposed, that the mark Cas left him was comforting now.

Even the blood was preferable to freezing. That said, it didn't make bleeding any more pleasant, or any less dangerous.

It was fully dark, by the time Dean gave up on Castiel returning on his own. Son of a bitch wasn't anywhere nearby (Dean always knew, because the handprint freaking _tingled_ in his presence), and Dean could only assume that he'd tangled with something bad as hell. So, lacking any other means of communication, Dean shut his eyes and prayed.

"Uh, Dear Castiel, I have no idea where you are, but some company would be really nice right about now. I, uh, I got torn up pretty good by those gorilla wolf bastards, so, heh, you think you could zap on over and give me a hand, buddy?"

He waited, trying to be patient. As long as he dared, Dean waited, occasionally sending out another word for the angel to track. But several hours into the night, Dean had to call uncle. Cas wasn't coming tonight. The old beast of Suspicion opened an eye, but it remained still for now. Surely, if Castiel had ended up in a scrap with a big bad, he'd have kicked its ass?

But that was irrational and Dean knew it. To him, the day had seemed an eternity, limping and bleeding, but one day wasn't really all too long. For all he knew, Cas was still fighting, or perhaps trying to lose whatever he'd tussled with.

Maybe he was hurt.

The fear that the Hunter felt then was a big part of how shitty that night went. He stayed where he was, mostly hidden, trying to keep his weight off the lacerated shoulder. It was arctic in temperature, the fog of his rapid breathing filling the little root-cave. He'd been shivering for what felt like forever, and though the pressure of his shirt and jacket had since stopped the bleeding, his skin was cool and uncomfortably damp were his blood still stained.

In accompaniment with the tense trembling born of his Hunters' instinct (which did not like being trapped in fucking _Purgatory_), and the fear he felt over Castiel's unknown predicament, Dean lived through an awful night. Even though he was exhausted, his twitchiness woke him at every sound.

Dean truly wished that the first night – alone, cold, injured, afraid – had been the worst. But in the following weeks, while he healed and discovered the painful advantages of Purgatory, the nights came thick and dangerous and rarely better.

By the time the wound had sealed into angry lashes of red and white, Dean knew how to survive. Adapting was something he did best, and to lack the skill in this place meant lacking a pulse. By then, the Hunter had learned to recognise signs of other souls, learned to identify them based on noise or behaviour. Some were easy to kill, and they stayed far away from him. Others were harder, but he had taken up a quest to find his angel, and the weak knew nothing.

Castiel, despite his nightly prayers, had still not responded. The fact worried him in multiple ways, although he tried his absolute to ignore the possibility of abandonment. Every time the idea even _thought_ about crossing his mind, Dean crushed it down relentlessly. Cas wouldn't abandon him like that. Not again. No matter the wrong the angel had done, his eyes had not been lying when he promised to redeem himself. Dean believed wholeheartedly that the angel had meant his words, because he knew the expression of self-loathing. He knew it intimately.

But it did leave the possibility that Cas was hurt. For whatever reason, he may not have healed, or he may be sustaining constant injury. Either way, Dean needed to find him. Every day he spent alone crawled into his brain and rotted there, until all Dean could wish for was something more familiar than the demonblade in his hand.

For his part, Dean knew that Castiel was not dead. Though he himself had to rely on only his five human senses, it was obvious that the monster souls had some kind of sixth sense. He attracted far too many of the things for his stealth to be lacking, and several of them had actually spoken about the draw of his humanity. Dean had always known he tasted good, but it had never before been quite so literal.

The days wore on, and Dean began to roam further and further, feeling his body thin and strip to bare muscle. It was almost never that the human got to eat, locked down here, but for some reason it didn't seem to weaken him. By now, he had even adjusted to the hollow gnawing in his belly. Hunger, or starvation, was unpleasant, but that seemed to be all it was. It made a sick kind of sense; Dean was in Purgatory. He was a soul in his own right. Technically, he was dead.

Anger slithered under his skin whenever he thought about the fact, always accompanied by the thought that technically, Castiel was dead too. It didn't matter, though – it never mattered. Dead or not, alive or whatever they were, Dean would find the angelic idiot and then he would drag both their asses out of here if it killed them. Re-killed them. _Un-_killed them.

…Whatever.

At first, everything had known where the angel was to be found. The location and direction changed with every monster he caught, leading him to believe that Castiel had still been running, changing places every few hours or so. If he'd had the nifty power of teleportation, Dean wouldn't have stayed in one place either. But over time, the creatures who had known anything had started to diminish, and when one did know something, the locations seemed less varied.

Dean wasn't sure what that meant. Did it mean Castiel was too tired to continue zapping around like an insane hummingbird? Or was he simply getting better at covering himself? If he was still suffering from Sam's old madness, then Cas could be thinking _anything_. Who knew why he had slowed his flight?

One night had frightened him. He'd been settling down, relatively protected (it was barely an outcrop of rock, but it was more cover than he _had_ risked sleep under), and just starting his nightly prayer.

"Cas, if you're out there buddy, I'll find you. I don't know if you're injured or what, but anything that's hunting you can answer right to me, alright? I'm alright, tonight," he added. It was odd, that he had chosen to ensure that Cas knew the condition _he_ was in with every prayer… Perhaps it was a subconscious attempt to feel closer to the bastard. After all, Castiel was the only thing he knew down here. "The nausea stopped this morning, so I got a good day's hike in. Just settling down now. No new injuries to speak of, though the neck wound is still bitching a bit." For a second, he hesitated. Then again, he had started pouring more truth into the prayers days ago, and he didn't feel the need to stop.

Despite himself, Castiel was one of the most empathetic creatures Dean had ever met, angel or not. Maybe, if he allowed himself to be honest, open (and realistically, who even knew if Cas was getting his prayers? He probably wasn't; Purgatory could be infinitely bigger than Earth and heaven, he could easily be out of range), just maybe Cas wouldn't be able to help but reply.

"The handprint stopped burning about noon. I guess that means the sickness is totally gone, since it only seems to act up when there's something wrong with me, these days," he added. "No tingles, so I know you're nowhere near me…" For a while, Dean lay coiled behind the small grey ledge, rubbing his thumb over the edge of the demonblade. On most nights, he made a habit of cleaning it, but he hadn't been able to source nearby water, so it was still stained with the black-red of old blood.

Like the hunger, thirst didn't actually hurt him, but it was a hell of a lot harder to ignore than hunger, and it had lost him more than one fight. Contemplating in silence, he absently rubbed one such wound; it had been shallow, barely more than a paper cut over his wrist, but the scar was moonlight white. "Come on, Cas," he whispered, more to himself than actual prayer. "Where the hell are you?"

For just over an hour after that, Dean dozed. He assumed that sleep wasn't necessary for him here, just as water or food didn't seem to be, but the exhaustion would get him killed if he didn't risk it most nights.

And soon into the next half hour, the howling began around him. Myriad sounds poured out from the woods, saturating the otherwise dead air in a shimmering cacophony of monster screams. Dean jerked awake, and found himself on his feet, peering around urgently. His hand clenched around the demonblade so hard his knuckles were white, his fingers almost numb. It wasn't just werewolves or shifters out there. Dean knew the sounds, knew how the creatures ran.

No, the army of souls that had just shifted into one purpose was _everything_. Even the littlest freaks were in on whatever game they'd found. And it wasn't him because, as much as his humanity seemed to draw them in, the small game stayed right out of his way, and had done for a while.

It had to be Cas.

As if in confirmation, a sharp tingle ran through his shoulder, dancing along the faded ridges where Castiel had gripped him. Swivelling his head, Dean tried to pinpoint the source of the feeling and, unable to do so, crept out from his ledge. Time to follow the herd.

But by the time he got near the lead monsters, the tingling had vanished and the souls began to mill about in furious confusion. It wasn't long until they began to feast on each other, and Dean couldn't help but wonder if it was simply because they truly had nothing better to do. Nevertheless, he snuck away, knife at the ready, and left them to tearing each other to shreds. Cas was gone. Even if he'd been nearby, he was utterly out of reach now.

The next night, when Dean felt he was much safer than he normally was, nestled in a cave behind a waterfall (complete with escape route), he leaned against the wall of the cave. He savoured the warmth that still remained in the rocks from the daylight, thinking about what he was about to say.

Praying for Cas's safety or companionship seemed foolish, all of a sudden. The previous night had been the first real sense of the angelic presence in Purgatory that he had come across in a long time. Soon, he would find him. Soon. But until then, begging like a helpless schoolgirl no longer appealed to him. It was time he took up his own slack, time he _made_ Cas listen.

First, he upheld his silent bargain to inform the seraph. Eyes closed, he huddled down and focused. "Dear Cas. I'm fine tonight. A bit more sheltered than I usually am, even found some warm rocks. Might even get an hour or two of real sleep. No more injuries to speak of, even the neck thing was quiet today… I felt you around last night, though. When all those freaks just jumped at you. Frigging psychopaths…"

Here, Dean trailed off, considering himself. But he was sure of his actions, and now that he was, Purgatory stood no chance. Either Purgatory would cough them back out, or Dean would die trying to make it. Knowing that, he felt Cas deserved a new kind of prayer. A different kind.

"I'm going to find you, Cas. Whatever's wrong with you, I'll find you. We'll get the fuck out of this hellhole. I swear it. So wherever you are, you keep fighting. If you're dead when I find you, then you better hope to hell that it's God who brings you back and not me, cause I'll kick your feathery ass." Prayer over, he settled back without opening his eyes, his knife held close in case he was rudely awoken, and let himself drift closer to sleep. He didn't need to say anything more that night, he didn't need to sign off.

Castiel knew what he meant. Child or not, the angel did know Dean better than the Hunter normally cared to admit. He'd hear the real message behind the threat.

Until morning, Dean slept, and then he fought onwards until night, and his next sworn prayer to the absent angel.


	3. The Beast Inside Us

**Molly-Myles, dear, you are amazing. Obligatory Instant Win Sticks to you! Her Beta work is, as always, impeccable.**

**This chapter is dedicated to Dimac.31 for your Review. Stay shiny!**

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Castiel was beginning to wish he could sleep. It was, undoubtedly, a dangerous pastime within the confines of Purgatory, and it would, most likely, earn him an injury or two. But perhaps it would help ease the pain of his wings, or at the very least calm his Grace. It had never before been so unruly. He had an inkling that the reason his Grace was starting to become uncontrollable was because he was trying so hard to hide it. There had always been something undeniable about angels, in contrast to humans; Castiel wasn't the only seraph to have seen it. His power didn't like being confined.

As of yet, it hadn't escaped its enforced bonds, but every night it came close. Genuine though his appreciation of Dean's prayers was, every time he heard that voice, it made controlling himself just that much harder. At first, it had been relatively easy to resist responding to the prayers; he had ignored Dean's prayers before, although it had always left a strange, constricted feeling in his chest to do so.

Dean was his charge. His human. He was the mortal that hosted Castiel's Grace. It felt unnatural to ignore him.

But Castiel did, because it was easier to protect Dean by staying away. He did, even struggling with his Grace every night. After so long contained, it was a constant pulse against Castiel's wings, like Jimmy's heartbeat against his skin. Odd, that the two vastly different sensations could be compared. Sometimes, the angel didn't know whether its corruption made his power weaker or stronger; when it pushed at the weakest points in his control, and thin trickles leaked out (summoning nearby souls), it felt stronger. Rationally, though, the seraph had to wonder if it seemed that way only because he had never attempted such control before.

Castiel always looked forward to Dean's prayers. Despite how it affected his Grace, Castiel enjoyed the sound of Dean's voice, even allowing for how rough and pained it had become. The fear had long since faded, for which Castiel was grateful, but he had never adjusted to everything else that came with that relief. Every time he heard a scrape of pain in the human's words, he flinched. He couldn't quite understand the physical reaction, beyond that Jimmy's muscle memory demanded it, but he very much understood the reason for it. And even so, Castiel treasured the evenings, because it meant that Dean was okay. It connected them across this land of abominations.

This particular night, he had settled not as far from his previous hiding place as he would have liked – allowing that 'settled' was a bit of an exaggeration. Flying was becoming increasingly difficult, though not from lack of power. It was just that through his feathers was the easiest way for his Grace to leak out, and the longer he unfurled them, the more escaped him.

He was seriously wondering if he would have to start walking soon, flying only when he had to. For fear of losing control of his Grace, Castiel had begun testing himself before he moved, flexing his black wings for a few moments before using them. They had buzzed, vibrating with his compressed Grace, but he'd felt as if it was under control. He'd been wrong. The second he'd lifted from the ground, the exertion had sent tendrils of Grace spiralling out from his windswipe, glowing faintly in Purgatory's gloom. Castiel had felt himself crack, and then there hadn't been time to land. It was stop flying or explode.

The sudden loss of lift had sent him crashing into the ground, though he did not skid. A small crater blew out around his body, black dust filling the air and partially blinding the angel. The sharp ache of impact trauma filled him, causing him to wince and hiss softly when he got to his feet. Braver souls were approaching him, and smaller ones. The starving and the foolish allowed themselves to be drawn to his unintended outburst of power, and Castiel gritted his teeth in a surprisingly human gesture.

Let them come. Smiting them should prove helpful to him anyway.

Having thought the thought, Castiel did not take it back, but he sighed to himself and turned to run. Over the past few weeks, he'd found he actually rather enjoyed the physical exertion; it was a way to express the restlessness of his frantic Grace without risking it breaking free, or putting further strain on his aching wings. So running was not unwelcome. However, his previous thoughts were. On earth, Castiel had never taken pleasure in smiting living creatures, monster or otherwise. He had learned many thousands of years ago to accept the necessity, but he had rarely enjoyed it. Of all the times he had, the angel could find cause in that he was taking revenge for wrongs done to a close companion.

But Purgatory was different. For a while now, as he became less and less able to outrun anything that hunted him, he had discovered that he no longer had a choice about creatures that did not pose a threat. Once, he had let one go.

Just once.

At the time, Castiel had maintained his self-perceived status as angelic. Therefore, though he had long since appreciated humanity, he was better than the monsters of this place. Unlike them, he did not need to ravage anything he came across. So, when the little Wendigo had crossed his path, he had sent it on its way with nothing more than a warning, allowing his eyes to show his true power. The action had accomplished its purpose; never again had he seen the Wendigo, nor any of its fellows. But that night, five Leviathan had found him. While not sleeping, he had been resting, his senses duller than he normally deemed safe. They had gotten close. So very close.

It seemed that with their ability to murder anything around them, Castiel did not heal so easily from their claws. He had become alert to their presence just in time to flee, teleporting in every direction in his attempts to throw them off, but they had clipped him on his way past. The wound (scored across his right side like an incomplete sigil) had been shallow, barely a scrape, but the pain had been fiery, and it had bled profusely.

A seraph he may be, but Castiel, once he had evaded the monsters, had been forced to stop at a lake, and clean himself. Every movement had hurt, the torture of a Leviathan's touch engulfing his entire body. The water had swirled with scarlet, the colour startling in the otherwise whitewashed expanse, and the freezing bite of it against the injury had been both painful and welcome.

That had been near the beginning. He had learned, all too easily, that the Wendigo he had spared had betrayed his location to the Leviathan, though how still escaped him. After that, Castiel dared not spare any who saw him, keeping a careful track of the souls that came near. In Purgatory, he had learned, one must kill or be killed. No middle ground. No option number three.

His right wing twinged as he ran through the trees, still tender where the Leviathan had hurt him. Only a creature such as that could have seen or touched his wings. Even between brethren, angels had a difficult time making contact with another's wings; there was something instinctually sacred about them. Castiel had only two friends with which he had ever permitted feather contact… and he had stabbed one of them in the back.

The creatures chasing him would give up soon. He could sense it in their stride. But something in him, the same part of him that _wanted_ them to find him, the part of him that had been growing ever larger with Purgatory's steady diet of fear and pain and creatures intent on his death, made him stop. He _wanted_ them to catch up. He _wanted_ to smite them all. It was something basic, something in the very bottom of his coding. Primal. Powerful. A part of himself that Castiel had never allowed to flourish before, because it was vicious and hungry. A necessary component for a soldier, the one who must deal in bloodshed and violence, but not one that could be allowed to grow. That particular appetite was what turned good angels – and good humans, too – into things like Lucifer.

It was howling now. Everything that resided in Purgatory was a monster. Perhaps that was why humans and angels and even demons were not usually permitted here. An _angel_ who grew accustomed to the hunt slowly became detestable. Castiel loathed that he stopped, turned, hands flexing while he awaited the onslaught of evil souls.

But he did.

And when they arrived, and he danced amongst them the dance of eternal damnation, hands flashing and their bodies burning from the brief touch of his Grace, Castiel found he laughed. It wasn't the kind of slow, quietly happy laugh that he had once shared with a human, back in the real world. Nor was it the stiff, formal chuckle required of him when Uriel or other angels had uttered a 'joke'. It was low, gut-wrenching and almost a growl. It was predatory. And it was pure.

Once he was done, and he could sense no souls for half a mile around, the fallen seraph inspected the carnage around him. At least two dozen creatures of chaos lay scattered around him, each in varied states of disintegration. His Grace felt alive, quivering under the skin of his flesh-bound form, and if he had let it, it would have shone for miles around him.

Castiel was disgusted by his own actions, by the exhilaration that the destruction had rewarded him with. The frantic beating of Jimmy's heart, the buzzing sensation that the adrenalin in his blood gave him, the rapid breathing that seemed to catch in his throat by way of a half-formed chuckle – it all made him nauseas. How could he, a seraph, an angel of the Lord, find such pleasure in such sin? He wanted to find a pyre and cleanse himself with it. All the better for it to be formed of holy fire.

The remorse did nothing to abate the delight, though. For all that his actions horrified him, Castiel's emotions soared, encouraged by the chemical reactions that he could not control. _He had won_. The fight had been for his life, and he had won.

Thrilled, and sickened by it, Castiel turned on the spot and began to run again, leaving the evidence to be scavenged by a lesser soul. _I am an angel,_ he told himself, over and over again, each syllable the **thud** of his sprinting steps. _I am an angel_. He did not get to succumb to such tendencies. He was not permitted to _enjoy_ the slaughter. Murder was a sin. It was not to be condoned. It was to occur only when necessary. He killed those that found him because he must. Not because somewhere, deep inside, the angel relished the power he held over these lesser creatures.

Eventually, Castiel slowed, his breath coming to him in ragged gasps, his ears echoing with the pressure of his heartbeat. Strange though it was, he had taken to drinking water when he found it. It brought no real relief, as it seemed to bring to Dean and other humans, but the water in Purgatory was always ice cold, and he had discovered he somewhat enjoyed the feel of it down his throat. Particularly during the stifling 'daytime'.

That in mind, Castiel navigated his way towards a stream using his ears, though the action was so familiar that it left him far too much of his mind in excess. As he knelt, rubbing the cool liquid over his face (startled once again to feel the sharp stubble on his cheeks), images and feelings circulated through his thoughts.

The water passing through his lips felt suddenly thick as he recalled the blood of his prey. _Victims_. He was an angel. He was not a predator. He did not have 'prey'.

Castiel coughed, choking on the liquid he had so very enjoyed. Those creatures, all those souls; he hadn't _needed_ to obliterate them. He had taken the measure because it felt good, but the shame of it was crushing. True though it was that he owed the souls in this place nothing, it reminded him too much of the near genocide he had committed in heaven. The feeling was too similar. And the guilt felt almost crippling.

Only too well, now, could he understand why Dean had simply given up when Joshua had declared God divorced from the Apocalypse. How much _easier_ it would be for him to search out the Leviathan and let himself be taken? No more would he have to suffer the guilt, or the ache of his wings, or the constant beating of Jimmy's thrice-damned heart.

It thundered now, eclipsing his other senses. A cold tendril of fear touched the accursed muscle, as Castiel realised his normal sight was failing, flickering white and black in time with Jimmy's… _his_ pulse. The body that had slowly turned over all sensation to the angel no longer belonged to the human, and it had not for quite a while. Hosting a seraph was relatively safe for a human capable of it, such as Jimmy Novak, providing that the seraph in question was not of the archangel persuasion. But vessels usually were not required for extended periods of time. Castiel had inhabited Jimmy's skin for so long that the human himself was all but gone. His soul still glowed, somewhere within the shroud of Castiel's Grace, but everything that defined the human had been burned out long ago by the celestial.

So no, the enraged heartbeat was not Jimmy's. It did not belong to the human whose voice had not been heard in years. Castiel controlled this vessel, owned it. More and more it was becoming his _body_, not a mere conduit through which to interact with his Father's last creation. The emotions were his, the chemical reactions Castiel's own.

And the crushing guilt laid squarely on his wings, shivering time with _his_ heart.

The seed of fear bloomed quickly into panic as Castiel thought about this, because it did nothing to distract him from what he had done. If anything, it exacerbated the situation. Now he had simply overwritten and defiled an otherwise devout human with his own sin. Prayed for such an event Jimmy might have, but how could Castiel have dared trust the man's judgement? He'd known nothing about what hosting the angel would entail.

_Chained to a comet,_ he had said. Castiel certainly felt like a comet; out of control, and destroying whatever he touched. He had been wrong, all those years past. This body, this form… it was not 'a vessel'. Once, it had been a human. But no longer.

A sound broke Castiel from his dark musings. It was not close, nor could the angel sense an accompanying soul, but the noise made the trees tremble and the river bubble. Low and long, it scraped across Castiel's hearing, both mortal and divine, and stilled the frantic heart. His panic died with his breath, and for a protracted moment all Castiel could do was listen. For that second, his Grace shrunk all on its own, hiding itself away under his pitch wings.

Then, with one final shake, the sound faded and Castiel could breathe again. Night had truly fallen, and in the aftermath of whatever had emitted such a din, he could not help but tremble. Nothing, not even Leviathan, could slide through his Grace like that.

_No,_ he corrected himself as he walked carefully downstream, towards a thicket of bone white saplings. _It did not puncture my Grace. My Grace moved aside._

Thousands and thousands of years, Castiel had existed. For a short slice of that, he had even lived. In all that time, only the Leviathan had ever found ways to break through an angel's Grace and slaughter them where they stood. It was not a particularly clean way of assassinating God's warriors, but hew through the Grace and an angel was utterly vulnerable. It was very similar to the way angelblades worked; blessed by an archangel, they perforated the Grace and devoured it, and its angel with it.

This was different. The creature (and Castiel _prayed_ that there was only one, that it was not interested in him), whatever it had been, did not break his Grace in the way Leviathan did. It would not need to. Only the sound, and Castiel doubted it had been anything even resembling a battle-cry, and his Grace had meekly slithered aside.

With merely a word, that creature could end Castiel where he stood.

As if in rebellion, Castiel's Grace surged outward, straining against his every fibre. Move aside it had, but Castiel was truly an angel, even fallen, and his power was _not_ to be dismissed. This time, when he heard the low sound, he knew it was drawn from his own throat. Even utterly still, phantom wings wrapped around himself, bursts of Grace slipped through his skin, swirling around him as his blood had swirled through the lake water. Perhaps, in lieu of his recent skirmish, Purgatory's prisoners would be hesitant to approach him. Perhaps, if he stayed exactly where he was, very still, and kept his eyes tight closed until he could control himself, perhaps they would stay away.

It almost brought physical pain, denying himself. Grace was never meant to be shut away in this manner. Castiel was literally tearing himself apart. Soon, his mind may begin to decay once again, as it had under Sam's madness. He would have to find a solution before that happened. It could not be allowed to happen again. If he frayed here, he would die.

Despite his earlier thoughts, Castiel knew he could not allow himself to die. It would be easier, and cleaner, but he deserved far worse than death. To escape his crimes so easily… no. He would stay here, and fight for his own survival, because living in this hell-adjacent plane was a penance he had to pay. It would be the least that could befall him; had he a soul, Castiel would have gladly offered himself up to Crowley, and allowed the demon to rake his hatred—

_Cas, if you're out there buddy, I'll find you. I don't know if you're injured or what, but anything that's hunting you can answer right to me, alright? I'm alright, tonight_. Castiel stumbled, drawn towards the prayer as he always was. Grace shimmered on the ground where his feet had been, dissipating in little eddies of angel-specific light. Almost nothing else could see the struggle Castiel was having with his power. In this one moment, he was glad that Dean was not standing beside him, glad that he was alone. It could have meant Dean's abolition had he been there.

_The nausea stopped this morning, so I got a good day's hike in. Just settling down now. No new injuries to speak of, though the neck wound is still bitching a bit._

…

_The handprint stopped burning about noon. I guess that means the sickness is totally gone, since it only seems to act up when there's something wrong with me, these days. No tingles, so I know you're nowhere near me…_

If Castiel had been a lesser creature, the noise that twisted from his throat may have been called a whine. Spirals of cold blue light floated past his lips, borne on his breath. Once again, the angel stumbled, and this time he allowed himself to fall into a crouch, covering his ears with his hands. Maybe, if he dulled the sound of Dean's voice – bleak and miserable – then the painful tugging would cease. If he curled into himself and dragged his Grace down from where it wanted to fly and kept himself wrapped up in his black feathers, then maybe it would go away.

In the mortal flesh, Castiel was small. He was tiny and insignificant and fragile. But he had never felt it (barring the few days he had been truly mortal near the end of the Apocalypse), because his true self was not. Now, he did. His delicate human flesh seemed to vibrate with the effort required of it, caging his Grace and all his power.

Slowly, though, he was winning. His will was rising above the strength of his angelic power and his Grace unwillingly began to sink back into the box he had created for it.

_Come on, Cas… Where the hell are you?_

Light.

His sight exploded into light, as if he were staring into a blue-white sun, and all Castiel could think was that he was too weak, he couldn't control it, his Grace was going to rip out of his skin and roast whatever foolish souls had wandered close and_ he had to open his wings and get somewhere safe because he couldn't see and he couldn't feel anything but the pull of a prayer in his name and __**why was he so afraid, why was the asinine human heart beating so fast**_—

A Leviathan stood in his way.

For the first time since he had taken his vessel, Castiel truly flew. His seraphic form still did not breach the barriers of mortal senses, but it took control and thick furrows opened along the shoulder blades of his human form where, were his two forms to combine, his wings would grow. He did not feel the pain, nor the hot drip of blood down his back. Only a shadow of a shadow, his vast sable pinions spread either side of him, and he hovered before his mortal enemy.

The Leviathan convulsed upon itself, but it did not shoot to ground. Instead, it came closer and orbited the angel. The fear its kind used to penetrate Castiel's Grace cloaked them, and Castiel did not feel it. He could not feel anything, beyond the glorious _incandesce_ of his Grace. It billowed around him, and it seemed to Castiel's eyes that nothing existed beyond its ice blue radiance.

Truth be told, it hesitated. The Leviathan took pause from Castiel's power, his unexpected confidence. Perhaps he had discovered something. Perhaps, there was a good reason for the seraph's sudden stand. Nevertheless, Leviathan trumped angel, and it lunged, teeth glistening with poisonous saliva.

Castiel's moment of freedom fractured around him when he felt the teeth close around his calf. Even assured of itself, the Leviathan had not dared attack close to the inky wings. The bite tore into the white-blue light, and Castiel had screamed before he realised he was doing so. Midair, the seraph thrashed, instinctually fighting to free himself from the stronger opponent. For half a minute, the Leviathan refused him, keeping its teeth firmly embedded in Castiel's flesh.

The shadows flapped, buffeting the forest below, sending miniature tornadoes of leaves into the air, but not until the Leviathan decided that it was safe to tear the angel's wings off did it release him. In that second, when he was free, Castiel vanished.

When he reappeared, he had not landed so much as crashed. His two selves had separated once more, as they should, and the wounds his wings had inflicted upon his mortal body began to heal. The Leviathan-inflicted injury, however, pulsed blood. As the cut across his side had, it was laced with whatever venom the Leviathan had at their disposal, and even now it was commencing its scorching work.

The Leviathan was still nearby. Having been taught his lesson, Castiel felt the fear it sent before it, and he fled as far as he could in the opposite direction, heedless of any other creature that came near. As he had before, he crashed when he reappeared, right on the edge of a vampire nest. The blood-drinkers leapt away from him before they realised what he was. When they did, a couple of them edged closer, but the rest backed away slowly. Obviously, this nest had heard tell of him, but the scent of his blood must have been too much for some. Ignoring them utterly, Castiel spread his invisible wings, and moaned at the effort taxed of him.

He kept going, never paying the slightest attention to his surroundings, always going as far from the Leviathan as he could. It had gathered company, and soon there were eight on his trail. Every time he had to pause, he landed in a messy pile of blood and pain, tumbling and skidding until he vanished once again. There was no time for him to think, to calculate. He knew he was leaving pools of Grace energy wherever he went, knew that it was dripping from his feathers, knew that the Leviathan could track it.

But it didn't matter. His right calf had been decimated beyond all reasonable repair. Leviathan teeth were not neat, and one bite had been enough to shred the muscle and skin. But then he had struggled. Had Castiel been merely mortal, he was quite sure he would have already 'bled out'. Shockingly white bone was exposed under the ruined tissue, and though it had escaped fracture, a long line showed where a tooth had scored across it.

Again and again Castiel flew. Even that first time, wings flashing, he had not been so fast as this. That had been logical, necessary in order to survive. This was nothing more than prey fleeing death. Even wounded, even with his whole body alight with Leviathan poison, Castiel did not stop running until finally – _finally_ – the sharp sting of a Leviathan soul could not be felt.

His mind was a blur. He didn't know how long he'd flown, how far he'd come, even where he was. He didn't know where he'd been, or how many had seen him. It hardly mattered, though. Castiel would be lucky if he survived until morning. All of his senses were virtually useless, overwhelmed by the agony of the Leviathan's bite. Venom was hardly necessary in their arsenal. Maybe they didn't have it – maybe their touch affected only angels in this way.

Howls went up around him. Castiel barely heard them, though he understood why they were there. His Grace was in full force, like a blue supernova in the vast greyness of Purgatory. It thrummed within him, at war with the poison of the Leviathan. There was nothing, not for miles and miles and miles, that would not be attracted to him.

To be entrapped in a ring of holy fire was a strange sensation. He knew that, if he touched it, he would burn and die. He was not an archangel, he could not survive such flames. Castiel had only experienced the ring of holy fire thrice in his lifetime, and all were dreadful memories for him. The holy fire blazed higher when an angel was trapped within it, as if it could sense them. For Castiel, he always felt that it flickered inwards, towards him, straining for a taste of angel flesh. The heat had always been unforgiving, burning straight past his mortal form and smothering his divine one. It was one of the few things that could inspire real fear in him.

This was what Castiel imagined burning in holy fire would feel like. Utterly crippling, shutting off his sight and his hearing and his Grace, until all that was left was the harrowing pain.

And yet, even then, something managed to touch him. A tiny thing, against the sea that he found himself drowning in. Like a single star in an otherwise empty night sky. But it was just enough to focus whatever thoughts he had left, until he realised he was actually thinking something. _Dean…_

A solitary human soul.

Dean had always accused Castiel of being a nerd angel, and as he felt Dean's soul getting ever closer, lore tumbled through his head undiluted, like a solar flare. Most of it was meaningless, lost amongst the pain, but a few things stood out. The most important was concerning a connection. A connection between an angel's Grace and a human's soul. There was something profound about that, he knew… A connection… A _literal connection_.

A solution snapped into place in Castiel's mind, and the sudden hope gave him enough room to think appropriately. Untold sounds spilled past his lips as he pushed himself into a sitting position, though he was deaf to them all. He could not afford to listen to them, nor could he allow the embarrassment to fester.

His Grace was trying to eliminate the poison. If it were stronger, it would be able to. And the only thing that could strengthen it was a human soul.

Castiel's initial intention, however ill it may have been, was to await Dean's inevitable arrival and hope. It was selfish and terribly dangerous, but Castiel didn't have the current cognitive skills to realise that. Siphoning that much power from Dean's soul could knock him unconscious, or even worse (should Castiel make a mistake), he could explode. But the consequences had been forgotten amongst the lore that Castiel did not remember, because he was _burning_ and Dean could make it _stop_.

And then, just for a moment, he became aware of the screams that were not his own. All around him, the army of creatures drawn to him, they were singing their cries of extirpation, vaporising the moment they came within Castiel's Grace.

As quickly as he had made his decision to stay, Castiel teleported himself away, though not without a pained cry. Dean was mortal. Dean could not see his Grace. Could not hear his voice. If Dean got close, Dean would burn.

Dean couldn't burn.

Once more, not fully in control of himself, Castiel teleported away from Dean, taking his lethal presence far away from the human. _The tingles_… Somehow, Dean would know he had been there… Castiel couldn't understand why that was so important, but it was…

It was holy fire. It had to be. He could not smell burning, nor did he remember anyone having access to holy oil, but it couldn't possibly be anything else. Nothing could incinerate him so utterly except for holy fire. He was an angel, he'd flown through the very fires of Hell itself and emerged virtually unscathed, soul in hand. He had hosted a million million souls, basked in their blistering power, and survived intact, in the end. The Leviathan themselves, all of them, had not tortured him such as this, simply broken apart his vessel from the inside out.

A simple bite could not subjugate him to this torture. It had to be holy fire. It _must be_.

Time did not pass for Castiel. Though creatures came (and did not go, but rather atomised beside him), time did not move forward. There was only the endless moment of Castiel's pyre. It was a funeral pyre of the holiest fire to have ever burned, and Castiel prayed over and over again for forgiveness. For absolution of whatever sin he had committed to deserve this.

But heaven was a long way from Purgatory. His brothers and sisters could not hear him. And they likely did not care to. His Father was not present there.

Eventually, he realised that he must have stopped breathing. The pyre was smouldering now, settling into the very essence of his being, and though it must mean his death, Castiel was glad. He welcomed the end of the flames, begged it closer. Anything, anything, anything but the holy fire. Deeper and deeper the embers fell, right down through his spent Grace until they hit his soul.

…

…

…

_Wait_.

New hope came to life in his chest, violent as the birth of a storm, of a volcano. _Angels didn't have souls._ But it had been there all along, shining away faintly. And this time, Castiel did not think. He did not hesitate. Laying himself open, he drew up the remains of his Grace and wrapped it around the human soul that still dwelt within Jimmy Novak.

Gold light exploded around him, and suddenly the pain was gone. Razor sharp clarity, like fresh glass, filled Castiel's mind and he gasped without bothering to wonder at the action. Carefully, so carefully, he slowed his Grace. The power of a human soul was brilliant, unrivalled, unbridled, blinding gold. It encompassed him with effervescing strength, but there was a dire price. The anxiety that came with sapping the power made Castiel feel hollow, as if he were teetering on the edge of vertigo, as if one stray movement may cause him to shatter.

Eyes closed with the effort, tense and utterly still, Castiel gently pulled his Grace back to him. The experience had exhausted him the first time he'd dared attempt it – on a friend no less – and though he had not really ever been able to sort through the labyrinth of emotion that had assaulted him following it, the angel tried to draw on that knowledge now.

Carefully, the gold light scintillating as it burst from his skin, Castiel drew his Grace out of Jimmy's soul and prevented a nuclear detonation. This time, Castiel felt the hours go by, and the air was the sauna of 'daytime' before he had finished.

But eventually, his heart as frantic as the rabbit he had once observed, Castiel's Grace settled and the gold light faded from his form and he relaxed. The angel was utterly enervated. He could not have flown if he'd wanted to.

Around him, even in Purgatory – or perhaps because he _was_ in Purgatory, and that land had never before seen the power of an angel, nor the power of a human soul – the trees were blasted from their roots by the force of Jimmy's soul, the ground scoured clean. A thin layer of dark ash coated the crater that had formed. Had he not been the cause, Castiel himself may have wondered what ungodly creature had created it.

Vaguely, the seraph knew he should move. He was exposed and weak, and there were still things hunting him. Knowing that, he tried just once to lift his arms, to stretch his wings. The ache that filled him when he did forced a soft hiss of air between his teeth. Never before had he been so very _tired_. Weary was something he could understand; all he required was rest. But this feeling was the same one that had gripped him, once, in the back of Dean's Impala, where he had at least felt safe. Only now, it was compounded a hundred times. Rest would not cure this ailment. _Sleep_ would.

For a moment, Castiel found a dose of irony in that thought. He was an angel. Angels couldn't sleep. How funny it was, humorous even, that he now required it.

It took merely a second more for Castiel's consciousness to fade into the void.


	4. Allies in Disguise

**To nezzie: Thank you very much for Reviewing, and also concerning Castiel; Aw, yeah. I love writing Castiel, but I always worry that I'm not representing an angel right. =) You (along with everyone else) always give me such confidence about it, every time I think about your Reviews.**

**I would like to present all the love to Molly-Myles for her excellent Beta work; and I shall dedicate this chapter to her as well. =^.^=**

**Oh, and about the Disney princess reference: _I'm not sorry._**

* * *

The light had been bright enough for Dean to see, even though it had to have been miles and miles away. Brilliant gold, the sight of it had been like fresh air in Purgatory's stagnant plane. For nigh on months, the only real colour that Dean had seen was the blood he'd shed. He found himself going towards it, because damned if that wasn't Cas. Leviathan were black, and if anything had the kind of power to shine like that, it was an angel.

Hours passed, and Dean alternated between sneaking and sprinting towards Cas, trying not to freak out. What could have caused it? Something was clearly wrong, because Cas had never gotten close to him before now – and the light thing was really freaking new.

Was he hurt? Dead? (Again?) As long as the golden light kept shining, Dean knew that his angel was still alive, fighting.

He broke into a run again, the fear of eternal solitude lending him speed. Back in the real world, Dean had relied on Sam more than he would ever admit. It was the knowledge that his brother was always ready to support him when he eventually crumbled – or alternatively, nag him like a bad ex-girlfriend until he did. Despite how he acted, Dean knew his own limits. He knew that he couldn't run indefinitely without help in bearing his guilt and self-loathing. Sam had been safe, the one place he could unload when he felt he might collapse.

Here, Sam was gone. But Dean had a goal: find Cas. Somewhere along the line, as Dean had accepted Sam's absence and shifted his focus entirely to his current job, Cas had become safe. The angel did not reply, and so Dean suffered no judgement for his honesty. And with his ever-growing suspicion that Cas couldn't hear him anyway, he suffered no embarrassment either.

It was more than that, though, Dean reflected as he tore through the trees. Back home, Sam had relied on Dean every bit as much as Dean had depended on Sam, if not more so. The elder Winchester could not even imagine what his brother was doing even at that very moment, and nor did he care to. Sam would be suffering, alone, without him. Everything always went wrong when they were apart. Either they did something stupid, or reckless; and sometimes reckless and stupid found them. But go wrong it would. And now, Sam could not turn to Dean for help. He had to do it alone.

Here, now, in Purgatory, Cas didn't have to be alone. If Dean could find him, if he could maybe pray just a little louder… He couldn't honestly say what the angel was up to. But whatever it was, Cas had Dean's already assured help. He always had, really.

And then, they would get out of this clusterfuck monster-Hell. Together. Or (a possibility that was beginning to seem more distant the longer Dean fought), they could get eaten. But what's a game without a little risk?

Some time into the day, when Dean was barely jogging and panting from the heat, clothes slicked to him with sweat and mud and blood, the light he was following died. When it did, Dean stopped, staring towards where it had been blankly. He'd won. That was it. Whatever big nasty Cas had been fighting, he'd won, that was why the light had faded. He wasn't dead. Injured, Dean could handle; it wasn't as if Cas took long to heal.

But Cas wasn't dead.

Repeating the mantra in his head (as if he could _make_ it true through force of will alone), Dean began to walk in the same direction, eyes fixed to where he thought the light had been. He let himself move slowly, this time, trying to avoid detection. Cas was probably gone already, so he was in no rush anymore. He just wanted to see what the angel had been doing.

It _wasn't_ that Dean craved a stronger connection, and wanted to go where the seraph had been. That was stupid and chick flicky. He just wanted to make sure that Cas hadn't lost. _Duh_.

The hike was slow, and long, and Dean had begun to think that he'd turned somewhere and was going the wrong way before he came upon it. At the edges, the trees were bare of their sickly-looking leaves, scorched on whatever side faced towards the centre of the crater. But as he got closer, moving slowly, staring around at the destruction open-mouthed, Dean saw the trees start to scatter across the ground, blasted back by the force of Cas' power. The ones that were still standing (and the number was quickly dwindling to nothing as he neared the source of the explosion) were partially vaporised, and when Dean paused to rub one of the charred leaves, it crumbled between his fingers.

Rubbing the black powder onto his clothes, Dean continued towards the middle of the blast site. Once he reached it, standing amid the streaks of black ash that marked the place in an incoherent pattern, he found he could no longer deny his fear. It crept over his bones, chilling them with its touch. "Come on, Cas. What the fuck happened?" he muttered to himself, crouching down.

Right smack bang in the middle of the danger zone was the shape of Cas' body, laying flat on the ground. He couldn't be sure that it really was Cas (he didn't know the exact measurements of the angel), but it looked about right – and what else would have set some crazy shit like this off? The silhouette was burned into flakes of charcoal, and when Dean waved his hand over it, he could still feel heat.

And littered around, in thick layers, as if they'd crawled over their dead brethren in order to get close to the seraph, were mounds of arid bodies, blackened by Cas' power. They were all dead, and all smoking slightly. Had Dean been in the mood to make sarcastic quips, the words _monster jerky_ would be the first to mind.

This time, when he stood up and scanned the area again, he recognised what the streaks were. The outline of wings, enormous but half-folded, bent at the middle. They scarred the ground, stretching out from the human-shaped shadow seared on it.

Cas was not dead. _Cas was not dead._ Dean would not accept it. If Cas was dead, his body would still be here. Right? So the wing shapes were not evidence of Cas' demise. _They weren't._ Clearly, he'd had to go Big Bad Angel to kill the fucker he'd tangled with, but then he'd won, he'd fucked off somewhere like he always did. Cas would be fine.

Dean just had to find him.

For the next… well, what Dean guessed was about forty five minutes, he searched the blast zone for clues as to where Cas might have gone, though he didn't hold much hope. Cas had never been lax in hiding his whereabouts before, so the Hunter couldn't see why he would be now. But he looked anyway, because he had to find the angel.

He heard the noise when he had retreated to the outer edges of the explosion, searching the trees there. It was quiet, no more than a few hundred metres away, but it was definitely there.

"Who's there?" he demanded, spinning around to face the direction of the sound. He couldn't see anything, no creatures hungry for his blood lurking under the dim canopy, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Dean was a Hunter – always had been, always would be. But the monsters had always been hunted. Hiding was second nature to them.

Wary of attack, Dean yanked free the demonblade, holding it in front of him in warning. "Don't make me come and find you," he growled, eyes flickering across the small area he had to work with. "I've had a _really_ bad day."

There was a rustling, and then a quick blur of dark colour leapt from behind a tree and took off, circling around and away from the human. For a few feet, Dean broke into a sprint after it, but whatever freak had been tailing him, it was way faster than he'd expected. In any case, the Hunter turned to look where it had been hiding, just in case.

Imprinted on the tree was a dark smudge, powdery when Dean touched it, barely visible in the gloom. After a few seconds staring, the shape became obvious to him; _feathers_. It had to be Cas. He must have gone through this way after the fight, knocked the tree with a wing or something.

It felt kind of weird, thinking about Cas having wings. Dean had never seen them, beyond the shadows they created sometimes, and the guy had never been uncomfortable leaning against things. Having to picture him flying around was disconcerting, making Dean feel a little off-kilter. "It's like the freaking X-Men around here," Dean muttered to himself, turning his eyes back towards the smudge. But this time at least, the Hunter knew he was heading in the right direction.

Spinning the demonblade in his fingers, just for something else to do, Dean set off after the angel, walking slowly and ignoring the pain of his muscles. As had the days before, the hours started to blur into nothing but sensation. The thud of his boots on the leaf litter, the steady rake of the dry air through cracked lips. Every time he touched a tree, every trunk that held the smudge of feathers.

And every now and then, the sound of some dickwad tailing him.

It happened when he had paused to listen for the sound of water. Not fifty feet away, a freak (_vampire_, his mind supplied easily) emerged into the open, staring about itself frantically. For a second, their eyes met, and Dean felt a thick stab of satisfaction when the vamp looked afraid. Spinning on its heel, the monster began to flee, but Dean decided that wasn't good enough.

He was alone, and he was angry, and Cas had most definitely been hurt because why else would there be wing-scars on the ground and he just needed to hit something. So, demonblade in hand, Dean took off in a dead sprint in pursuit of the vampire, and damned if it didn't feel _great_ that it was so scared of the human.

Somewhere during the chase, though, Dean's brain wrecked his Hell-party. _The vampire was running the same course Cas had; the same trail Dean was following._ Maybe, just maybe, if Dean was just lucky enough, just this once, it knew something.

As he hurdled fallen logs, Dean stashed his demon-killing knife, and instead palmed a silver dagger. It wouldn't kill the son of a bitch, but it would hurt a lot more.

Now, the chase became predatory. It wasn't just a release, and Dean wasn't just doing it for fun. He had purpose. Reason. The vampire was going to talk, and then it was going to die. Dean had all the tools he needed to ensure that happened.

Over dead trees and slippery-as-December-ice leaf litter, down little slopes and declines, through trees that had grown way too close together, Dean hunted the creature, until finally, just for a moment, he lost it. Coming to an immediate halt, the Hunter scanned around him, pale eyes darting back and forth in sharp flickers, waiting for a noise, a print, anything. And off to his left, a twig snapped.

For precious few seconds, Dean stared in that direction, judging the sound, and then he took off after it, because it had to be the vampire. Maybe it was the thing that had been tracking him all day.

When he spotted the vamp, hesitating by a tree, he slowed and walked as stealthily as he could. Back in the real world, his creeping skills had been somewhat lacking, but now, after weeks and weeks of Purgatory's training, he was a pro. Dean was standing behind the thing before it even knew he was there.

The vampire must have sensed him, or smelled him, because its shoulders fell for a moment and then it swung at him, a very large obsidian blade bound by rope and bone in its grip. It was a whole bone, just the right size to be that of a human (or, given the circumstances, another vampire), and bore the obsidian's weight with ease.

Instinct and training kicked in and Dean's muscles flowed into action. He felt himself moving, knew what he was going to do, but he didn't actively do it. He just watched himself knock the weapon from the vamp's hands with one clean blow to its arm, and then hurl it backwards, slamming it against a tree. Terrified, it snarled at him, needle teeth clicking into place over human ones, but Dean just held the edge of his dagger against the creature's throat and smirked.

"Take a breath, calm down," he ordered, holding the monster where it was but not yet hurting it. There had to be incentive. Why would the thing talk if there wasn't? Dean gave the vampire a few moments, impatient, as it panted against the tree.

Its face cleared in defeat, its inhuman teeth retracted back into its gums. Resentfully, it stared at him through its brown hair.

"Where's the angel?" Dean demanded quietly, knuckles tightening around the handle of his blade. This could be it. The undead douchebag might know something. He could be about to find Cas!

But it just huffed softly, lips parting in a grim amusement. And already, Dean knew the cause was lost, but he forced it anyway, because he had to find Cas. Failure had never been an option, not with Sammy, not with the Apocalypse, not with Dick, and certainly not now with the angel. "You're him," it stated harshly, the words more air than noise as it tried to chuckle. "The _human_." And now it was almost a whisper.

"_Where's the angel?_" Dean repeated himself, ramming the vampire's body back against the tree, hovering the silver dagger so temptingly close to the filthy blood-junkie's throat.

It brought its head forward, still whispering, and replied with far too much spite, "I don't know." It knew nothing, and the fucker knew that that reality was worse for Dean than having to force the information. The Hunter hadn't exactly been making himself very subtle, everything had to know he was searching for the bloody seraph by now.

Very carefully, Dean kept the disappointment and the fury out of his face. Instead, he stared just a fraction longer than he needed to, and felt somewhat appeased by the sight of the smug son of a bitch becoming afraid again. "Hmph," he hummed softly, deciding on his action.

This asshole was losing his head.

In one quick motion, he raised his hand, twisted the blade, and stabbed it into the vampire's arm, satisfied by the animal growl of pain that the vampire uttered in response. Moving quickly, while the freak was still held to the tree, Dean turned and retrieved the obsidian weapon, eyeing it for a second. It was well-made, well sharpened. It would do the job nicely.

Flipping it over, Dean backhanded it towards the vampire and felt it rip straight through its neck. He waited for the head and the body to fall before he moved again, starting to feel sluggish from his failure. He still didn't know how to find Cas, he had no plan, nothing beyond just _finding_ the angel. And just to round the shitty truth of his existence off, Dean had no idea where he was. He'd lost Cas' trail.

That was why he was looking down when the second vamp tackled him. It was why he hadn't seen it coming.

The bone handle of his new weapon slipped, jarred from his grip by the force of the new enemy. They rolled once, ended up on the ground, Dean beneath and pushing upwards with all his strength to prevent the thing from sinking deadly teeth into his throat. He glanced around even as he fought, knowing he couldn't twist down to get his knife, desperate for something to kill the motherfucker with.

Nearby, just out of conventional reach, the bone-obsidian axe-blade thing lay on the ground. Dean threw one hand out, straining towards it, grunting with the effort of keeping the crazed vampire off him. Their twisted dance dipped and swayed, teeth gritted, teeth bared, and still Dean could not quite reach the weapon.

Finally, he knew he had to get the damn thing _off_ him first and he grabbed its shoulders, feeling his back muscles pop from the effort.

There was the flash of a black overcoat, a snarl that mirrored his attacker's, and then Dean was unencumbered and there were two monsters on the ground nearby, fighting it out. As he got to his feet, bone-blade now in hand, and observed the new change of dynamics, he realised just how inaccurate _fighting_ was. The newcomer, the one in the overcoat, had the rabid creature pinned, and swiped its head off without hesitation, though his weapon made a bloody mess of it.

Hesitantly, Dean glared at the third vampire he'd met today, watching while it returned his stare warily, and its teeth retracted.

So it wasn't going to aggress on him.

Dean had his new weapon raised, just in case, but he didn't attack yet. Something was way wrong with this picture. Why had the vampire helped him? Why wasn't it attacking him? Was it the thing that had been tailing him? Why was it standing up peacefully? Why did it _dare_ look away from him?

"What… No thanks fer saving your hide?" he asked, his voice cracked from Purgatory's air and carrying a distinct Cajun accent.

Thanks? The bastard wasn't dead yet, was he? "Sure," Dean responded, hearing the sound of his own voice and wondering when it, too, had cracked. Raising the new blade for emphasis, he added, "I won't shove this up your ass."

He'd expected the vampire to grin or smirk or spite him, like they always did. But it just watched him, and hummed briefly, beginning to circle. Almost automatically, Dean began to step sideways, mimicking the movement. _Don't be caught off guard. Don't let them get too close._ Years later, the words John Winchester had etched into Dean's brain repeated themselves in his mind.

"Awful strange way to punch yer meal ticket, friend." Dean's insides contracted at the endearment, but he remained silent for now, because the vampire wasn't done. "I got somethin' you need."

Somehow, in all the universe, unless this dickwad knew where Cas was, Dean doubted it had anything he either needed or wanted. "Yeah, what's that?" he spat in return, allowing his distrust to seep into his voice.

_Now,_ the vampire smirked. "A way out," it offered.

_What? Impossible_. Dean laughed sarcastically, because anyone who would offer that line was either stupid or really desperate. "Even a dental apocalypse like you knows there's no such thing," he rebutted, gesturing with the dark blade.

"There is if you're human." The words were delivered quietly, utterly self-assured, with the subtlest of smirks. And as much as Dean hated to believe a monster, there was something about the tone that made him think, _Just maybe…_

"God has made it so; leas', that's the rumour," it continued, cocking its head slightly to admit that it was indeed rumour. Albeit a rumour the vamp obviously believed.

"Bull," Dean snapped back instantly, because it had to be lying. There was no way out of Purgatory. It was made purely to _imprison_. And Dean utterly ignored the fact he'd been intent on getting his and Cas' asses out for most of his sentence.

The vampire sighed. "Suit yourself. Maybe you've gone native," he accused, "_maybe_ you like being man-meat for every Tom, Dick… and Harry." Dean didn't appreciate the pause that it left after the name _Dick_. It left a taste in his mouth that reminded him far too much of Leviathan. And when the Hunter didn't immediately reply, it scoffed quietly.

But they stopped circling.

"Prove it," Dean bit out, gritting his teeth slightly. If there was even the slightest hope, he wouldn't trust it without proof… he couldn't.

But the vampire chuckled. "Nah… Yer either in or yer out."

And the offer stood.

"So you just wanna guide me outta Purgatory outta the goodness of your undead heart?" Dean quipped sarcastically, gesturing with the obsidian weapon unconsciously. No way, no way in Hell, or heaven, or _this_ godforsaken place.

A slight grin. "More or less." The Cajun accent was starting to grate on Dean's nerves.

"What's in it for you?" the human demanded, because the damned vampire wouldn't be doing all this unless it had something to gain; not if Dean was a Disney princess and it was Prince Undead Charming.

He honestly didn't expect a real answer, though, because nothing that the vamp had to say could be good. So he was shocked when the vampire looked at him levelly and straight up admitted, "I'm hoppin' a ride."

"_What?_" Whiplash quick.

"It's a _human_ portal, jackass," the vampire intoned, and the implied 'moron' was obvious. Dean felt a sting at that, but there wasn't time to waste. He still had to find Cas, in the midst of all this, even if the vampire was telling the truth. "Only humans can pass through. I show you the door… you hump my soul to the oth'r side."

It all made sense now. The vamp wanted out, just as much as Dean did, but he couldn't do it without a human. And humans never came here. Dean had to be the first one in… ooh, forever. And this vamp had been the only one clever to figure it all out. "So you're looking for a soul train," he mocked, hoping to piss this dick off. If the vamp attacked, Dean could kill it and be on his way. But he still owed him for that other vamp. And Dean Winchester hated being in debt.

But all the vampire did was raise an eyebrow. "Sure, if that's what yer into…"

For a long moment, they just watched each other. There was no way it was true, it couldn't be… but why would a vampire go to all the trouble of hunting him down if it wasn't? Why was the bastard being so freaking candid about it? If it was all lies, then Dean sure as hell was starting to buy it.

"And how do I know this isn't a setup? How do I know I ain't gonna end up like your friend over here?" Dean shot back, his words rapid, his own stupid accent stuttering as he spoke too fast. He was aware of the gesture this time, the tip of the blade dipping towards the beheaded vamp on the ground.

The vamp still standing looked at the corpse for a moment, still smirking. "'e was my friend. Now you are." The arms moved slightly, indicating the vamp's readiness to embrace such radical thinking. Dean wasn't so sure; he glared. "Firs' rule of Purgatory, kid: you can't trust nobody."

"You just _asked_ me to trust you," Dean snapped indignantly. Bloody, stupid, fucking monsters, always trying fancy fucking schemes. Just once, Dean wished that one of the clever ones would choose the violence that made this place so… _pure_.

The vampire tilted his head slightly, eyes lighting up for the first time. "Ya see? Yer gettin' it now."

"Hm," Dean smirked, the expression sour. Ass clown was screwing around and they both knew it. But the offer was genuine. In all his years of hunting, Dean knew genuine when he saw it. This vamp would lead him to the portal in exchange for getting out of Purgatory. It made sense, in a way; prison break had always been a good motivator. It was enough of a motivator for Dean to consider it.

Just for now, he would accept the deal. Just for now. If the vamp made one wrong move, just one… Well, Dean knew how sharp his blade was. Pointing at the bloodsucker with his 100% authentic Purgatory weapon, just because it made him feel a bit better, Dean made a compromise. "First we find the angel."

"Three's a crowd, Chief," the vamp replied immediately, looking away. It was clearly one of the things at the bottom of this asshat's To Do List, but this was one point where Dean would not relent. They find Cas. They find Cas _first_. Because they were not leaving this overrun hellhole without that damned angel.

So Dean shrugged and lifted the blade to his shoulder, stepping closer to his possible business-of-Purgatory-partner. "Well, hey. Either you're in… or you're out."

Slowly, the vampire grinned, and then ever so slowly, he began to laugh. "Alrigh', partner," he mumbled, holding out his hand. There was tension there, as there bloody well should be, but Dean took it anyway. "You got yerself a deal."

When Dean turned away, all his senses strained backwards, tracking the vampire by sound, and some sixth sense born of his Hunters' instinct. Damned if he was getting skewered by some cheap vamp just because he looked away for too long. But he turned away anyway, and began to walk in whatever direction he hoped was the way he'd come, because Cas was that way and Cas was his first priority. Behind him, the leaves crunched under the vamp's feet as it followed him, silent now.

Dean was glad for it. Words were a pain when unwanted, and the accent dug into his brain and _nibbled_. He felt like digging the obsidian into his skull and jiggling until it all went away, but of course he couldn't.

So he tracked and led the vamp until they hit nightfall and a river, and then he crouched down to indicate they stop. For tonight, at least. Dean needed a few hours sleep, and for now he felt like he could trust the vampire not to stab him while he had his eyes closed. It would defeat the whole purpose of tag-teaming with the human.

"Name's Benny," the vamp finally said, once they were settled against a pair of trees just off the shoreline of the waterway.

Eyes narrowed, Dean looked over at him through the gloom, but, well, he was in Purgatory. Personal information meant practically nothing here. "Dean," he grunted back, shutting his eyes. "Don't get me killed, Benny."

Tilting his head off to the side, the Hunter kept his eyes shut and slowed his breathing rather deliberately, suddenly not caring if the vampire noticed. Quietly, under his breath, he began whispering his nightly prayer.

"I met a vampire named Benny," he said, figuring he might as well get this over with. "Don't freak out, alright, Cas? He says he can get us out. Some crap about a portal or something. But if he's right, Cas, we can get out. So whatever happened to you, buddy, just sit your ass tight, alright? I'll find you." Here he hesitated, because he didn't know if Benny could hear him, and he didn't know if he cared. But even quieter than before, Dean continued his muttered prayer to the wayward angel. "I'm fine, ok? Don't you worry about me. If this freak tries anything, I'll take his damn head off."

Mind skimming over his words, Dean didn't notice at first that the vamp had suddenly become 'he' rather than 'it', but when a creature had a name… Well, a lifetime of society stuck with you, even when it was fucked up society and that world didn't exist anymore.

"I found your crater… There was wing marks everywhere. What did you do, man? Throw a freaking disco party? There were bodies all over the place." It was the spike of fear that prompted it. The tiny sliver that Dean tried so hard to ignore, because he would not _accept_ anything other than Cas' victory over the douchenozzle he'd scrapped with, and even entertaining the idea that the angel could have lost felt like betrayal. But the fear was there nonetheless, and Dean heard his words turn to supplications before he was even aware of it. "Please, Cas, tell me you're alright. You can't be dead, you just can't… I'll find you."

Dean repeated the phrase, his words turning hard with his gaze, promising the missing member of Team Free Will; making a Winchester oath. "_I'll find you_."

And Benny just watched him blankly, not saying a word.


	5. To Hunt Again

**All of you should raise your hands to the wonderful Molly-Myles, for having the patience to Beta this even though other people were practically stalking her attention span.**

**This one is dedicated to Twin; Clockwork Silver.**

**And I honestly apologise. Sam is a demonic little shitbag who overran my plans with flashback bullshit. I love him anyway, but still.**

* * *

Deep within, in the heart of his soul, where he was honest with himself even when he wanted to be anything but, Sam Winchester still had not stopped running.

He tried to deny it, when he looked in the mirror and met his own eyes, and sometimes – when he did mundane, necessary things like eat, or exchange courtesies with strangers – sometimes he even believed it. But always, when he lay down to sleep in the darkness and missed the sound of Dean's breathing, or when he stood under the pelt of his morning shower and realised he couldn't hear his brother's obnoxious music… that was when the loneliness consumed him.

As with all things, some days were better. Some days Sam was able to meander along, wandering through whatever town or city he'd arrived at or just drive. In some ways, the driving was better because he could let his reflexes take over and just shut himself down. He didn't have to think, he didn't have to feel. He could just _drive_.

In other ways, it was awful. The Impala was Dean's, it had always been Dean's. Once, he knew, it had belonged to John, to Dad, but… it always felt like Dean. Even the scent reminded him of his brother; dusky, like hot leather and the faint twist of smoky beer. The elder Winchester had always smelled like that, even before the leather jackets and alcoholism. Maybe it was because of how often he'd spent just curled up in the back of this car, or because of how much time he spent around Dad, but the smouldering scent of beer and sunned leather had always been Dean. It reminded him of all the times his brother had meant safety, every time.

Like when he had gone hunting with them for the first time. Not just done all the legwork research for the other Winchesters, but actually accompanied them, and slashed a ghost to ribbons with an iron poker. There had been two, and Sam had miscalculated. Getting his ass thrown into a glass table hadn't been the worst that had happened that day. Dean had been pretty cut up as well by the time Dad had managed to burn the bones, but he had ignored his injuries and carried Sam out of there regardless.

Sam couldn't remember very much until he woke up in the back of the Impala, four and half hours later, his head cradled in Dean's lap. Dean had been dozing, his neck bent uncomfortably to accommodate for the backseat, and Dad had been driving. What he did recall was being surrounded by that smell, which was uniquely Dean.

There were many other events besides, but what they all led up to was that Sam had always connected the smell with utter safety. True, Dean's overprotective habits had got irritating as he'd grown up, but the sense had never left him; that was Dean, and Dean was utterly safe.

Perhaps, in the end, that was why Sam always let himself switch off when he drove the car. Baby smelled of Dean (or perhaps Dean smelled of Baby) and it was the one place Sam didn't _have_ to think. He didn't have to worry about being alone or having demons try to strangle him with his own intestines or not being bitten by the damned werewolf. Unlike everything else in his life, he could just… _not_.

But, in painful contrast, some days were harrowing.

The hunt was always hard. In the weeks since Dean's disappearance, Sam had gone on two. The first had been directly following Dick's death, after everyone had vanished, and he'd been perhaps a touch deranged.

When he had stumbled out of that building, and found a horde of demons dragging headless bodies that oozed black sludge, Sam hadn't been able to even react. Numb to both the hellspawn and the fact that he may have been (just a little) blind from tears, he'd staggered to where the Impala was and sank into the passenger seat. Alright, so Sam was man enough to admit he'd been crying then, but it wasn't obnoxious or anything. It had been silent and streaked down his face, more from shock than anything else.

Only minutes ago, he'd been surrounded by his family, small though it was. His big brother, who always had an answer even when he was wrong. Castiel, the angel who had not fallen so much as nosedived into their family. Even Kevin's absence left a hole in his chest, because the kid reminded him of himself, a little. Unwilling, loathed the job, but diligently doing it anyway.

And it was all gone. Crowley had Kevin. Dean was gone, and Castiel with him. They were probably dead. Bobby had left them behind already, and the only other people that Sam could have called family had all burned long ago.

It felt like somebody had forced everything Sam cared about into his body and let it all explode. He felt hollow, fragile, as if one touch might cause his flesh to fracture.

How long he had sat shotgun in the unmoving Impala, even Sam didn't know. But sit he had, not feeling the hot liquid wetting his cheeks until it dried into itchy traces of salt. Eventually, he'd had to realise that Dean wasn't going to open his door, and if he wanted to go anywhere, _Sam would have to drive himself…_

_Sam didn't bother to rub his face clean, leaving the tears to crust his lashes and dust his cheeks. Instead, he just scooted over the gears and into the driver's seat, all because he didn't want to get out. The Impala was familiar, the Impala was still here. When everything else had collapsed around him, the faithful car was still here, waiting for him._

_It smelled like home. And when Sam turned the key in the ignition, where it had been left, the wicked rumble sounded like home._

_He didn't know where he was going, only that he was. Everything was gone. He was alone. He was utterly alone and there was nothing left here but pain and memories. And so Sam Winchester, without thought or desire, allowed the shock to ripple into agony and he ran away._

_As he drove out of the large gate, though, something slammed full-speed into the windshield and the __**crack**__ drew all Sam's scattered attention. A demon, eyes shiny black as it got to its feet, had collided with Baby. Dean's Baby. The only thing that was still here, still familiar._

_**How dare it.**_

_He didn't have the demonblade, but it didn't matter. Sam was overcome with the need to kill this one demon, because of all the things to happen today, this one demon was within his grasp. It was all that he could do, now, because his world had imploded and left him stranded with a sleek black car, and this… __**thing**__, this abominable aberration of creation had _dared_ to touch even that._

_It had been a long time since Sam had craved the blood of a demon, and he was too overwhelmed to want it now. He was nothing but rage and confusion and terror, left so horribly alone like the night's last remaining star. So there was only urges, sensations, the hard, steel fingers of _need_ gripping him tight enough to leave marks, the need to kill this one little piece of filth just because he bloody well _could_._

_In all this time, in Sam's addiction and rehabilitation and the frank disgust that Sam's powers had always been greeted with, they had all forgotten something. Sam didn't need to drink it; he had demon blood in his own veins. A minute amount, it was true, and mostly dormant since Azazel's death, but it was there nevertheless. And now, he felt it simmering like magma, awaiting his inevitable eruption._

_There was nothing left. Nothing. He had nothing but the car and his memories, and it __**wasn't good enough**__. He was so shocked by everything that had just happened that he needed Dean to punch him or insult him or even just hug him and hold him together. And _Dean wasn't coming.

_The demon was scared. Sam could taste it, when he fell upon it and pinned it to the ground, slamming his knuckles into its face over and over and over again. His own skin broke, cut from the force of fist striking cheekbone, and Sam's blood mixed with that of the demon's. It didn't cry out, didn't say anything – didn't make a sound. All too soon, it stopped even struggling and lay still, simply accepting defeat. But Sam wasn't done, wasn't even close to feeling as if he could think through it all._

_So he kept going._

_The demon stared up at him, eyes filmed with glossy black, glazed. It just stared, unblinking, though its face was swelling and bruising and bloodied. If Sam didn't stop soon, bone was going to start to show. It could have been sixty minutes or sixty seconds, but eventually there was a sharp and resounding __**crack**__ and the demon's neck broke. Panting, blood splatters touching his face in a delicate pattern – as if deliberately painted there – Sam stared downwards, not yet comprehending what he'd done._

_If the host had survived before, she was most certainly dead now._

_After a few moments more, the eyes (barely visible now, behind purple and scarlet sockets) flickered, and Sam hit it again. His skin felt hot, tight, as if the lava of Azazel's blood was pushing outwards, overtaking him in a way it hadn't since his visions had first started._

_When Sam Winchester moved again, he moved slowly, and his bloodstained fingers caressed the demon's skin like a lover. It reminded him of the times with Ruby, when the sight of demon blood had aroused him and not enraged him, and the pain drowned in vicious gratification as he wrapped his hands around the demon's throat._

This_ was what should have happened then, and Sam took immense pleasure that it was what happened now. Starting to grin, not even caring if he was still crying or just starting to again, Sam __**squeezed**__._

_The demon choked, though that alone would not kill it. No, but there was power in Sam's body, power he had used before, power that he denied because it wasn't right, because Dean hated it._

_Dean wasn't here. He'd vanished. Abandoned him. Left little Sammy all alone, without _anyone_._

_Gradually, as Sam's strong hands crushed the dead girl's neck, strangling the demon she hosted, faint smudges of black rose to its lips. His skin pulsed and his body throbbed, alight with the fire of Azazel's curse, but Sam didn't care. Even when it spiked into pain and he had to open his mouth to breathe, thick blood dripping from his nostrils, he just kept going, squeezing tighter and tighter and letting his fury do the rest._

_Black smoke, like a cloud of ink underwater, poured from the demon's mouth, pooling around them and quivering against Sam's skin. It felt unpleasantly cool, a slippery dampness that cowered from the heat Sam radiated._

_Soon, the flow ceased, the entire demon splayed against the concrete for Sam's torment. But he didn't stop throttling the girl's corpse. There was something so distinctly satisfying about crushing something solid in his bare hands, the feeling of his tendons straining and snapping under the force, of the bones cutting into the flesh from the inside as he pressed the two together. It was sensation and it was sharp and real and distracting and didn't let him linger on his storm-blown emotions._

_So he kept going and the devastating demonic power he possessed ignited into sunlight in his chest and quite suddenly, the bones fractured and the demoncloud imploded in bloodred flames._

_His vision flickered and Sam went blind, each rush of air scraping through his raw throat as he realised for the first time that all was not silent. He was yelling, screaming, the demon he'd just slaughtered had been shrieking, and __**oh, oh, he couldn't-**__ he couldn't breathe properly. He was hot and fragile and his mouth was full of blood._

_It was his own blood. Demon blood tasted different._

_Stumbling, panic exploding in his chest and filling the void there, Sam lunged for the Impala. It was a flickering black blur, glinting, but he knew it was there. The younger Winchester yanked open the back door while his head turned into a white supernova and he choked on his own blood. For a moment, he felt the warm leather that he couldn't smell and then the whiteness and the pain and the fear all faded away._

When Sam had woken up, stiff and sore in the back of the Impala, the factory had been deserted. The only signs that anyone had ever been there were the track marks of black goo that littered the ground, and the blood of the demon host he'd killed. Little scorch marks touched the ground there too, evidence that Sam had not imagined his extracurricular weapon.

There were no bodies, no demons, and no Leviathan. For whatever reason, the demons had left him completely alone, and even the Impala seemed untouched. Because it was easier than concentrating on anything else, Sam tried to decide whether that was because Crowley had ordered them to leave him, or because they had been scared of him.

Either way, it didn't matter. Sam was informed of this by a little voice in the back of his mind, one that sounded painfully like his big brother. What mattered was…

Sam gagged slightly, supremely glad when he _didn't_ lose his guts in the backseat of the car. _He'd used his psychic powers_. He'd thought it was impossible now, without ingesting demon blood, but it wasn't. It was still there, inside him, waiting for him to give in.

And he had. He'd felt it and welcomed it and delighted in the demon's 'gift'. For the first time, he could understand why Dean detested it so much; not just that bad things had happened because of it, not just because Sam couldn't control himself when he had that much power, but the thing itself. It was dark and ugly and Sam truly loathed everything that the power represented.

But it did not erase the fact that Sam had embraced it once again.

He almost gagged a second time. All of that time, everything they'd sacrificed, all that had happened because of the stupid, _fucking_ demon blood, and in one moment, he'd simply forgotten it all and _smiled_ as he literally beat the life out of some poor girl.

The girl, the host of that demon, she would have been awake. Every punch Sam had thrown, every burst of rage or flicker of power, right up until her neck had snapped, she would have felt it all. The Hunter knew what it felt like to be beaten to death. In the Cage… well, he tried not to dwell on it, because nothing good ever came of dwelling on Hell, but Sam knew. And he'd happily inflicted that upon some teenage girl, _grinning_.

Demon blood or no, Sam Winchester knew that he was a monster.

Quite suddenly, Sam knew he had to just get out. He had to get away, to run until he left everything behind. No one was left to come find him anymore, there was no one to track him down this time. This time, he could run and never look back. And no one would grab his jaw and force him to.

Still half-blind from the after-effects of using demon power, his entire body trembling and throbbing, abandoned and with no excuse as to the monstrosity he had yet again proven himself to be, Sam had slid quietly into the driver's seat of the Impala, knocked her into gear and taken off, and he hadn't slowed down since.

…

No. That was a lie. One time, just one. He'd been in Maine, Auburn to be specific, knowing he would soon head south. It hadn't even been demons, just a tiny group of shapeshifters, no more than three or four. He wouldn't have even known they were there, if he hadn't literally walked into them. One moment, he'd been walking out of a diner and the waitress who had been flirting with him, and the next he was five blocks down and being shouted abuse at by the _same waitress_ for apparently bumping into her.

He didn't remember doing so, but… Well, the doppëlganger tweaked his interest more. Apologising quietly, he tucked his hands in his pockets and returned to his motel, eyes narrowed. It was instinct, ground into him by both father and brother. He was in a town. So were shapeshifters. Hunter + monster = hunting.

It had almost been too easy, tracking them down. The signs had all been there, laid out across his laptop screen. Sam was honestly surprised that no one else had taken the group down already; but, perhaps, it was only obvious to him.

Armed with at least five silver knives and his handgun, loaded with silver bullets, Sam had approached their hideout, looked it up and down, and kicked the door in. Up until this point, he had allowed himself to just hunt, without thinking about it too much. Sam did very little thinking these days; thinking hurt. His mind always went to dark places. But the shapeshifters hadn't been ready to stand aside and die.

After he'd shot the first one (a thirty-something man with short amber hair and a panicked expression, who had leapt to stand in front of the other three), a tiny roll of remorse had crept into his heart, and his hands unsteadied. Shrill cries filled the barn and the second shifter, still wearing the body of the waitress, had bolted to catch the one he'd shot. Cradled like that, the 'male' shifter had coughed, whispered something, reached up to caress the 'woman's face. The silver was too much for him and he faded away, his skin touched by a dark grey taint.

"Soren!" one of the other two had shouted, _but they hadn't attacked Sam, who just stood there with his gun pointed at them._

_The woman (long blonde hair, pale skin, nondescript brown eyes) utterly ignored the Hunter with the silver bullets, instead letting her tears splash onto the dead shifter's face. "Soren," she whispered, stroking his cheek. "Soren, Soren…" She didn't look up, didn't even heed the threat. She just knelt and held the creature tightly, repeating his name through a tight throat._

_Behind her, the other two stared at Sam in horror and fear and disgust. One of them, wearing the shape of a teenage boy, glared at him with remarkably grey eyes. For a moment, they flickered orange. "What is wrong with you?" he demanded, stepping forwards. "Who the fuck do you think you are, busting up in here—" His voice broke. Trembling with rage, the creature's hands clenched and Sam dropped the gun, palming a long silver dagger. A knife-fight seemed appropriate, though the Hunter was rapidly regretting his decision._

"_Jeany?" the last shifter asked quietly, tugging on the teenager's hand. She was little, her shape barely older than nine, with little red curls that Sam might have found adorable, had she been human. Large yellow-green eyes looked towards Jeany in supplication. "What's wrong with Soren?"_

_It was too much. Something in Sam snapped; how dare the monsters pretend to be so innocent, to have such a bond as _this_ when he was all alone?_

"_Don't pretend like you don't understand what's going on here," he growled, barely hearing his own words. "The body you're wearing doesn't fool me, you freak."_

_There was a very still moment, when Jeany and the little shifter stared at him, and then the girl burst into loud, wailing tears. Quickly, Jeany wrapped her closer in a standing hug, and levelled a deathglare in Sam's direction. "Did it ever occur to you," he said quietly, "that we tend to appear our age?"_

_No. No, it absolutely hadn't._

"_And you have the nerve to come in here and _kill_ Soren and make Lyssa cry?" Jeany wasn't even close to done, but Lyssa tugged on his shirt again._

_Her face white, eyes still wide, she sniffled and asked, "Jeany…? Is… Is Soren gone now? Like Paul went away?" Her tiny little voice was chipped, infinitely sad in that way that only children could be. And Sam dropped the knife, because he hadn't even waited for proof that they were doing anything wrong; he'd seen them and just attacked, and now one of them was dead. What if Jeany was telling the truth? If the little girl really was just a little girl? Albeit one who could look like whoever she wanted to…_

_A screech broke Sam's thoughts, and he gasped as a solid body slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. Fingers ripped into his shirt, seeking flesh to rend from bone, and he let it. It would be better. If he just died right now, then all the loneliness would be over and he could just…_

"_Carrie- Carrie!" Jeany yelled, and the enraged shifter was dragged off him. "We need to go, now," Jeany hissed. "Before anyone else shows up!"_

"_But Jeany," Lyssa's little voice broke in, starting to break into tears once again._

"_Now!" Jeany growled, gathering the tiny shifter in his arms. Without compunction, he glanced backwards and left, clearly expecting Carrie to follow him._

_She didn't. Not immediately. Instead, she stood over Sam, grief etched in her face with tears, and glared down at him. "Your kind are pathetic," she spat. "You Hunters- you're all the same. Did you even bother to check us before you came in here, guns blazing? You could have asked us. We don't even usually take forms of locals. We don't like changing forms," she added. "It __**hurts**__."_

_For a moment, he met her eyes, and his mouth opened to reply. But no words came out, because Sam couldn't argue. He hadn't checked. He hadn't done anything. He'd just up and decided that he should kill these shifters, because they were shifters. Was that really what he'd come to?_

_Carrie left in stormy silence, carrying Soren's corpse out with her. Sam knew why they left; they were shifters and he was a Hunter. If he didn't chase them down himself, then surely another Hunter would. And in the old days, that was exactly what would have happened. This time, he just couldn't. Tracking them had been too easy, he'd known it all along. But nothing awful had even happened in Auburn, Maine. No unusual crimes or deaths or even missing persons. Nothing that should have drawn his attention. They probably weren't doing anything other than trying to fit in with the humans. And what had he done?_

_Now one of them was dead. The way they acted like a family… Sam knew the feeling too well._

_Acid in his throat, the young Winchester pushed himself into a sitting position and stared at his own hands. It was the same thing as the demon. He might not have used psychic demon powers this time, but the weapon he chose didn't matter. The result was clearly the same, no matter who he met, or how he killed them. He hadn't thought twice about snapping the demon's neck, either, about turning the poor young host into the world's bloodiest punching bag._

_No. Sam Winchester didn't think. He just acted, and people died._

So at nights, when he lay in the darkness and tried to sleep, missing the distraction of Dean's breathing, Sam faced the truth. Still, he had not stopped running. And when he got up in the morning, unrested and shamefaced, when he stripped and stood under the hot lash of water, he faced an even deeper truth. He wasn't running from the loneliness or the supernatural creatures or even Crowley.

Sam Winchester was running from himself.


	6. Angels Do Not Clip Our Wings

**If you do not love Molly-Myles for all her wonderful Beta work, then I will break into your house while you sleep and eat ALL the good shit out of your fridge and cupboards. Good day, sah.  
**

**This chapter I refuse to dedicate to anyone but the SPN writers and Eric Kripke for creating such wonderful pain, because it is so awful. I am a horrible person. But you'll read it anyway. And Review.  
**

* * *

_I met a vampire named Benny._

Castiel froze where he flew, barely noticing the drag on his wings as he descended, not feeling the automatic adjusting of his pinions as he glided to the ground. It felt, to the angel, as if aeons had passed since he'd last heard the bass tones of Dean's voice. Internally, he knew it had been barely twenty-two hours, his angelic clock ticking away. But in a sense of weariness that Castiel knew he had not possessed prior to his fall, it seemed far longer.

_Don't freak out, alright, Cas? He says he can get us out. Some crap about a portal or something…_

The words meant little to the seraph, as he rematerialised in the middle of an empty clearing littered with huge, flat slabs of grey rock, but he was content enough just to hear the rough voice. It had never been, nor would it ever be, lilting, always cast hard from the life its owner had lived, but Castiel could admit that it was rougher than ever down in Purgatory. It bothered him a little, that it was so, but then even the angel's voice, when he occasionally heard it through the throat of his human shell, had cracked under Purgatory's weight.

_But if he's right, Cas, we can get out. So whatever happened to you, buddy, just sit your ass tight, alright? I'll find you._

Something flickered deep down in Castiel's Grace, a tiny twist of insight, and suddenly it was all the angel could do not to close his eyes and _listen_. Rapidly, Castiel mentally rewound Dean's prayer, focusing on the human's word choices and letting their meaning etch itself into his mind. _Dean could get out._

Elation took hold of the angel, a fast and buoyant emotion that forced new sensation through his physical body. Castiel was unnerved by the jackrabbit paced beating of Jimmy's—his heart, the fluttering tingle that slunk just under his—their?—skin, but it did nothing to dim the feeling of joy. Behind him, his ebony wings stretched and shifted, the feathers shivering with the same strange sting that assaulted his flesh.

Only on the fringes of the unfamiliar emotion did Castiel feel the opposite. It was complex and confusing, but if he looked at it objectively – wings snapping outwards – then the angel could see it there. If euphoria was a bright emotion, like the shimmer that his Grace had once been, then the other emotion was cracked and oily, like the pitted carnage that his Grace had become.

Castiel didn't have a name for the emotion, not at first. It was very similar to fear (something he was all too familiar with), and rather like sorrow. Both of those Castiel had experienced before, much to his own chagrin.

While he ruminated over what the emotion could be, a bit unnerved that after so many years he was encountering yet another new one, Castiel stepped carefully through the branches, following the sound of water. It was not the first time he had experienced true thirst, but the itchy sensation in his throat was unfamiliar enough that it had taken him time to recognise it as such. Only now did he know how to soothe his body. Had the seraph been anywhere but Purgatory, or had he exercised any other kind of power in the last day and a half, he may have been concerned that he was genuinely thirsty.

But Castiel had tapped into the power of the soul whose body was _his_ vessel. Not even in the archangels' wildest tales had Castiel heard of such a thing, and before the Rebellion – before Lucifer had fallen and Michael had withdrawn and Gabriel had fled – the archangels had spun many a fanciful saga.

Perhaps they simply hadn't known it was possible. Or perhaps they knew all too well, and had deliberately kept the lesser seraphs in the proverbial dark. Now that Castiel knew that his Grace could turn inwards like that, the feeling of Jimmy's thrumming soul was very distracting. Laying waste to himself was a far more attractive option than risking the destruction of someone Castiel actually cared about, and if he could learn to harness Jimmy's soul more efficiently… Well, Castiel had been lured by the prospect of power before.

It may have been that which saved him, if the angel was brutally honest. Already he had given into the corruption of power, and it had destroyed him. With the souls had come a sense of absolute freedom, because he was as powerful as _God_, and if Father didn't care anymore then he would take it upon himself to do something. He had _become_ God, and when the angels had cowered before him, he had smote the disobedient against Heaven's floor.

_Liberating_. That was the word Castiel sought. But the price of his liberation had been innocent human lives, had been the near-genocide of his entire species. Now that he was free of his power-induced madness, free of Sam's insanity, Castiel could feel nothing but guilt for his actions.

He bent by the edge of a stream, submerging his hands in the water and watching the topmost layer of grime swirl away in the current, and he knew what the other emotion was. It lurked behind his recent happiness, taking small bites at the ever-presence remorse, barely there as it waited, but Castiel knew it now. It was dread.

Or, perhaps more accurately, it was dismay. Either way, Castiel felt it and recognised why. Dean had mentioned a portal, had been informed of it by a vampire. Well, Castiel took unkindly towards vampires in general, but if Dean found trust in the creature… Dean had joined forces with it, in search of the portal, and Castiel could not deny that he found hope (an emotion he had all but abandoned) that the Hunter may yet get out.

But that wasn't what Dean had said. He had said _'we can get out'_. Even now, the Righteous Man was searching for Castiel – a poor, fallen angel with matted black wings. An angel who was alive (or however he was to exist in Purgatory) right now due only to the fluke of retaining his vessel, and his vessel's soul. If not for Jimmy, Castiel would have died, consumed by Leviathan poison. If not for Jimmy, even had he survived the toxic bite, Castiel would be easy prey, with his right leg beyond salvaging.

Because of Jimmy, Castiel had not only thrown off the effects of the Leviathan, but their flesh was healed of the injuries he had sustained. The human soul truly was a wondrous thing. Father had worked hard to craft it so perfectly flawed.

But he wasn't to leave. Dean wanted to pull them _both_ out of this plane, but Castiel couldn't atone that. He had committed far too much, caused far too much suffering to deserve anything _but_ this punishment. Fate had hurled the angel into Purgatory, but it was Castiel himself who would choose to stay. He could not abide leaving. It wasn't right that he should not have to pay for the atrocities done by his hand.

It was a vain hope, but Castiel silently beseeched Father that Dean would give up the search if it went badly, that he would ultimately leave alone. Pointless, when he was so far from Heaven's reach, when God had proven beyond a doubt that he cared so little for what occurred throughout his creation any longer, but Castiel was an angel, and Father's Word was encoded into his very existence. His Grace wouldn't exist without Father's blessing, and so even against all he believed, even though he _knew_ it was pointless, Castiel prayed.

_I'm fine, ok? Don't you worry about me. If this freak tries anything, I'll take his damn head off._

The words of Dean's prayer broke into the thought of Castiel's, and the angel felt tension in his face. A glance at his reflection in the river confirmed that the corners of his mortal lips had curved upwards very slightly. It had been so long since he had smiled, even a tiny bit, that the feeling was unfamiliar to Castiel at first, but it still saddened him slightly when it faded.

That Dean couldn't take care of himself was not something Castiel had considered. The notion seemed preposterous to him, especially now, after everything. If Dean had seen fit to collaborate with a vampire, then Castiel was sure that it was the best current course of action. And if the vampire (Benny, Dean had said) knew the location of the supposed portal, then Castiel would support that decision. All things considered, the seraph could believe that Father would have installed a portal in Purgatory. After all, He had designed it to cage the Leviathan, and anything else that wasn't human or angelic in nature.

Yes, Castiel could believe that He had created a failsafe should a human ever mistakenly end up here. Whether the portal would carry _him_ through was more uncertain, but Castiel ultimately determined that the point was irrelevant. He was not leaving, regardless.

_I found your crater… There was wing marks everywhere. What did you do, man? Throw a freaking disco party? There were bodies all over the place._

At these words, Castiel flinched. He hadn't even considered that possibility – that the golden light of Jimmy's soul would have been bright enough to attract one Dean Winchester, even at the distance he'd been. Hearing that the Hunter _had_ followed the light source, knowing now that Dean had seen the chaos of ashes and bodies that he had left behind him…

It was becoming too familiar, the sensation of physical discomfort that accompanied the dismay. Almost like he'd swallowed a heavy rock and it was slowly sinking down through his stomach. As ever, he was no closer to understanding why or _how_ such a simple thing as emotion could cause such physical reactions, but he'd begun to cease questioning it. By this time, Castiel didn't wonder at it, simply wished it would go away.

_Please, Cas, tell me you're alright. You can't be dead, you just can't… I'll find you._

_**I'll find you**__._

Three emotions very quickly became dominant for Castiel. Two were concurrent, and the third was the result of the first. The second emotion that Castiel felt after Dean's voice faded was a slow pool of dread, deep and heavy where it sat somewhere near his bowels. It was a strange feeling, almost like being overfull. It reminded him somewhat of the feeling of being brimming over with souls, with the Leviathan. It was not a pleasant feeling.

Thirdly was confusion, coming to life as the first emotion filled his chest with a hollow buoyancy. He didn't know what it was, honestly, but it was decidedly something he would not be opposed to feeling more often. Whatever the first emotion was, it had been instant, and it reminded him a little bit of gratitude, only it was far more powerful than that.

Was it… hope?

Finally, overriding all three, Castiel felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Had he been standing, it would have sent him to his knees, though the knowledge did little for him but increase the sensation. Castiel felt as if he was being smothered, like he had when Lucifer had bound him in holy fire, and the fallen archangel's Grace (as it were) had surrounded and asphyxiated his own.

Lucifer's Grace had been strange. Odd. Still powerful, still true to his status as an archangel, yet it had not shone with the blue-white purity that Castiel was accustomed to. It had been sharp, yellow, like lightning.

That was what this felt like. Castiel had felt this before, long ago, when he'd realised how futile it was to fight Raphael, when he'd realised he could submit and see the Apocalypse happen again and all of the Winchesters' sacrifice be in vain, or he could fight and die and _not_ see it happen. The difference was that then, he had been able to do something about it.

Now, he could do nothing. It was inevitable that the Leviathan would catch him again, whether it took a week a month or a year. When that happened, he couldn't rely on Jimmy's soul. He had nearly torn his vessel asunder by taking that action, and though he had faded beyond recognition, James Novak was still _alive_. He had given himself to the angel and Castiel would not repay that by destroying him. Perhaps his logic was flawed, given that both Jimmy and Castiel had been smote by archangels on more than one occasion, and vaporised by Leviathan on another. But no more – not again. Castiel would not be responsible for it any longer.

But, then, how could he prevent it? His Grace was a beacon, twisted and warped and the purest light in this land of abominations. This time, Castiel knew he would not be able to suppress it. It had been impossible enough beforehand – touched with the power of a human soul, it was vibrant and restless, far beyond his mediocre level of control.

Quietly, Castiel buried his face in his hands. The only way to hold back his Grace would be to strip it from himself, and he could not do that. Not here. Even if he would have survived such a transition, even if he desired it – there was nowhere to fall to here.

Castiel's willpower was not a strong enough cage to hold back his power. And so, it was inevitable. Eventually, Dean would find him. Eventually, the Leviathan would best him. Eventually, burning and unable to stop himself, he would delve into the depths of Jimmy's soul once again. And eventually, he would die. Still and silent, awaiting discovery, Castiel felt that his hopeless situation was a smidgen ironic. Here he knelt, a seraph at the height of ruin, awaiting death. And yet, if he was to perish once again, he could not help but feel that once again he would be resurrected. How it would happen, and where, and with whom… The fallen angel could only imagine.

It was worse every time.

And yet, even now, even drowning in the accursed choking feeling that was filling his mortal throat, the hope was still there. Small and warm, like a candle in the midst of darkness. Castiel shuddered to think about the source of that hope – because Dean had promised. Sworn to find him. Dean Winchester never revoked an oath he spoke in that tone, and Dean Winchester – somehow, illogically – always won.

Once, Castiel had observed a kitten that had survived an attack from an eagle. He had watched it struggle to walk, bleeding profusely from one back leg. At the time, he had adhered strictly to the agenda he was given, and healing a wayward animal was not part of that. As such, he had withheld his power, though sometimes he thought on that moment and knew that now, he would act differently.

Seeing the kitten battle onwards, despite that it was so injured, had inspired a rather curious reaction in the angel, even then. On one wing, he had admired the fragile little creature's determination, its will to live, and had decided that in light of that fact, it deserved to survive. On the other wing, it was so severely wounded that even should it heal, it would have been crippled for the remainder of its short life. Surely, death would be kinder? Sweeter, even? The emotions had conflicted, and so Castiel had directed a compassionate human towards the feline and left. The clash had been disorienting and disturbing, and when serving under Heaven's command, such emotion was dangerous.

How dearly Castiel wished he could flee from the conflict he felt now. Castiel could not be feeling hope, because he certainly did not deserve it, and even should Dean find him and escort him all the way to the portal, Castiel was not leaving. The angel needed punishment. Heaven had not been entirely wrong – when sin is committed, there must be equal retribution. That Castiel had come so far and done such terrible things with no divine justice meted out went against everything that he knew. There had to be punishment, otherwise reward became nugatory.

And yet the hope glowed there, physically warm in his chest in a manner that had almost ceased to surprise him by now. It was made even more confusing by the sense of dead weight that made the rest of his body heavy and cold. Even his wings shivered and drooped behind him, the feathers luminescent with Grace.

If there was a way to hold his Grace back, maybe he would survive long enough to see Dean through the portal. No matter _his_ sins, Dean did not deserve to suffer for them. At the very least, Castiel wanted to see Dean safe.

Slowly, as if it too was drowning in Castiel's raging emotions, an idea formed in his mind. Humans locked parts of themselves away all the time. Most often it was memories, but some humans suffered from multiple personalities, which manifested in their minds as separate beings, though cases of legitimate multiple souls in one body were rare, and Castiel had not personally seen one in seven thousand years. If humans were capable of creating sections of themselves that were utterly walled off from the rest of them, then surely angels could do it too.

Almost as slowly as the idea itself had come to him, Castiel saw a problem. It was true that humans fractured themselves almost constantly – but they required trauma to do it. How much depended on the person, but whilst trying not to be arrogant, Castiel felt that shutting his Grace away like that would require rather an awful trauma.

If he'd cared to, the angel might have sighed. He was in Purgatory, what trauma could he possibly inflict upon himself that would be sufficient? He could not fall, nor could he cast himself aside… There was nobody else besides a Leviathan who was capable to doing such a thing to him, and he wouldn't survive an encounter with a Leviathan. In despair as his next course of action, Castiel fluttered his wings and stretched them out, curling the glossy black pinions around his crouched form. They pulsed, bleeding Grace still tinted gold into the air, for all to taste. Soon, it would summon every soul for miles and miles. He would fight or he would flee or he would die.

But dying was too easy. Castiel did not deserve such mercy. Not yet.

This time, when realisation came to him, it did not slink. It struck him like the sudden pain of an angelblade, slicing and lacerating. For the third time since his creation, Castiel felt physically sick, the nausea gripping his stomach and flooding his throat. And this time, he did not have time to wonder about it before he experienced vomiting for the first time.

He immediately decided that he didn't like it. There was nothing but bile in the mortal stomach, and pain rippled through his belly, pulsing up his chest and through his lungs and his throat burned with the acid. And despite his previous curiosity, he had not been prepared for the _taste_ of it.

The solution was bad. Castiel knew that, even without the ridiculous physical reaction that his (perhaps _their_) body had given to the thought. Curiosity beyond sated, Castiel gave a single flap of his wings upstream, before thoroughly rinsing his mouth with the icy water. He might have wondered before, but now he just hoped that it never happened again.

For at least an hour, Castiel simply crouched on the dirt by the stream, staring at the water as it rushed by. He knew by now never to sit, and the habit had become ingrained, but his reflexes were shot to hell. There was only the water – he didn't even sense the souls around him. Once, a stray shifter dared to approach, and with a single flare of his wings and a burst of Grace, it disintegrated, and the others stayed away.

His wings. They were invisible to mortal eyes and intangible to their touch, like this. His seraphic form was contained within his vessel, but the wings shimmered through. Like this, they existed only on an angelic level; like a separate dimension stored entirely within the mortal one. If he chose to, he could manifest them on a mortal level, as he had against the Leviathan, but they would blind any normal human to lay eyes on them, and they tore through his vessel to do it.

Like this, though, Castiel could run his hands through the dark plumage. Quietly, his face lined with sorrow and terror, the angel brought his right wing forward, within his reach, and grasped the feathers with both hands.

For a while, he simply ran his fingers through them, because he knew perfectly well why his heart was beating so fast. He was not nervous – no, he was just afraid. But it had to be done, because he could not continue in this place while his Grace shone so brightly, and he could not shut its radiance away without doing what he was about to do.

The trauma, both physical and mental, was necessary.

That was what he told himself, while he traced the shaft of one primary. It had to be done. If he was to evade the Leviathan, if he was survive long enough to pay his penance, if he was see his charge, his Hunter, to safety… it had to be done. But it didn't make the task ahead any easier. And afterwards, when the blood had slowed and his screams had quietened, he would have to flee. It would be painful, it would take _time_. But he'd do it anyway, because staying so weakened would certainly mean his end.

Castiel couldn't think of a precedent for this. To be perfectly fair, Castiel's thoughts were becoming jumbled, incoherent like the flitting of butterflies. It was the fear. It reminded him of when the Leviathan were near—only not. This didn't force its way past his Grace and into his heart. This fear bled outwards, and that made it all the harder to resist.

_But it was for Dean_.

Clinging to that thought, Castiel ran his hands through his inky plumage once more, basking in the feel of the Grace-drenched wings and the feeling of hands moving through it. It was a strangely tingling sensation, running up along his leading edge and all the way to his mortal shoulder blades. Allowing himself to focus on that, Castiel twisted his hands, changing how he gripped the feathers, and took handfuls of them. If he'd desired precision, he would have held the base of each feather between his fingers, as he had when he had presented several feathers to the Winchester boys for more potent spell work.

But precision wasn't necessary. He wasn't trying to prevent damage, nor pain. It _needed_ to hurt, it _had_ to destroy him. Castiel didn't even bother to check where each fistful of feathers was held, simply tightened his grip, ignored the slight sting, and took a deep breath. For once, he understood the somewhat steadying effect of having lungs pulled taut.

All at once, he vellicated the wing, snapping it back and out straight, holding his hands in place. And the crumpled feathers stayed in his hands, tearing from the flesh and shedding drops of blood and Grace all around. Odd, actually, that blood resulted from such a wound, given that Castiel had not manifested his wings to the mortal plane to do this. But blood there still was.

That was the shock, he realised, only a fraction of a second before agony tore through his wing and he swallowed a cry, muffling it into a drawn-out moan. Pulling his wings away from his hands was not going to work. It took most of his concentration just to move the limb back within reach. No, he was going to have to do this the hard way.

Gathering his thoughts, Castiel began to focus on a box, deep inside, where his Grace was to flow. Holding that image in his mind, the angel dipped his hands into his wing again, grasped the black plumage tight and tore it out.

He was only halfway through the first wing when his self control broke and he started to scream, howling with every new handful he removed. Blood splattered the ground around him, streaking the sleeves of his trenchcoat, Grace puddling on the ground where it had leaked out. Black feathers, twisted and snapped and creased lay scattered around him, some almost luminescent with the remains of what they'd once belonged to, others dull and stiff with gore, manifested as they left him.

His hands were stained red, and his mind was filled only with the image of his Grace being sealed away, and the excruciating feeling of tearing his own feathers out. Again and again, Castiel plunged his hands into thinning black plumage and again and again, they came out with blood and broken feathers.

Thirty minutes later, when Castiel had abandoned all caution, and lay on his back, one wing was stripped down to a line of crystal, as colourless as a fledgling. Only it was worse, because even fledglings could fly. He couldn't see anymore, his sapphire eyes were shut and his face was torn into anguish. The feathers strewn about him lay sad and dull, but he did not hesitate, did not even think. Castiel did not even realise that he had bared his right wing down to the crystal, to what would be bone in mortal birds. He simply lifted his left wing, still lush with plumage, and began to strip that one too.

The cries sounded in his true voice now, shattering the air and razing the souls that gathered around him. The river boiled, and the trees cracked in twain. Without thought, without hope, Castiel ripped into his other wing and began to strip it down, leaving each feather to float to the ground as he would notes of his funeral song.

Strung with black, the air was thick with them, and Castiel screamed – more than he had at the mercy of the Leviathan, more than he had at the mercy of Heaven. The image was both beautiful and horrifying, that of a night-winged angel supine and convulsing with agony as he tore his own wings to ribbons of crystal. And that single sound, that of an angel's true voice in profound pain, rose above the trees and Purgatory cowered from it.

Castiel didn't stop until both wings were bare, and his Grace had retreated, and he lay amongst a bed of once-shimmering feathers. They fell about him, covering his body like a death shroud. The angel could not feel anything except the freezing inferno that his wings had become, destitute without plumage and nothing but crystal now. He couldn't feel the drumming of his heart, or the pant of his breath. He could not even see, his vision seared into ice blue whiteness from the resistance his Grace had offered.

Not even a sense of victory could pierce him now, even with his Grace safely trapped in a cage born of torment. All Castiel was was pain, and fire and ice, and the dangerous sensation of unconsciousness.

But the pain won out, and he lay in his deathbed of his own feathers and whimpered quietly to himself, waiting for thought to return.


	7. Undead Blood Junkie

**Here we are again, and here, have some Benny since the writers were awful and killed him off again. I know two things for certain: one, Bert and Ernie are gay. And two, Benny is absolutely going to be King of Purgatory when I get back.**

**A wonderful thanks to Molly-Myles, without whom this chapter wouldn't be half as good, because she is an excellent Beta! Thank you dear!**

**This one is dedicated to nicitta, who is marvelous and patient and wasn't at all mad at me even though I was awful and forgot that anything existed and was unlawfully late with her latest chapter of The Man Who Knew Too Much (I beta). Go and read it! It's very, very good.**

**About the mini-meme in this chapter... I actually am legitimately sorry. Kudos if you spot it, though, you Tumblrarians.**

* * *

It had been weeks. Weeks since Dean had forged an alliance with Benny, weeks since he'd seen the burn of Cas' power. And there'd been no trace of him, no word of where the angel was now. Dean couldn't figure it out. Before, every monster stronger than a toothpick had seemed to know where Cas was, or what he was doing. Now, he was lucky if they knew the vague direction of the angel.

Dean was left wondering if Cas had done something stupid. But the idea itself was stupid, because what in the hell could be tough enough to waste a freaking _angel_, even one as messed up as Cas? The answer, of course, was way too fucking obvious when he paused to think about it. _Leviathan_.

The idea that Leviathan were still running around Purgatory did more than worry the Hunter, but he hadn't yet seen hide nor hair (no, wait, hide nor _tooth_) of them. Given that he had stabbed their King through the fucking throat, Dean was taking it as personal insult if there were still Leviathan kicking here and they'd chosen to ignore him. Bar that, Dean was left with no choice but to assume that all the gooey bastards were still on Earth, and therefore there was nothing that he could think of with the power to gank an angel.

"There's a nest jus' up that ridge." Benny's drawl broke into his thoughts, and the vampire gestured upwards with his weapon. Dean wasn't sure what to call it, not really, since it _mangled_ more than it cut or stabbed. For a few moments, Benny looked Dean up and down, and sighed quietly to himself. Shifting his weight, he gestured absently with the… Mangler again. "You sure yer good f'r this?" he asked lowly, and the trace of genuine concern Dean heard in his voice didn't take away the sting of his words.

Irritation bubbled under Dean's skin. Being dead longer than Dean had been alive was no excuse for not knowing who he was dealing with; no matter where his thoughts were, Dean could handle a nest of vampires. "Of course I am," he snapped back, tightening his grip on the Obsidian. (Hey, the whole damn blade was made of the stuff, and besides, 'Obsidian' was a way cooler name for a Purgatory weapon than 'Mangler', and that's the _only_ thing that could be said about Benny's). "Just watch my back, Benny."

"'Nly if you watch mine," the vampire replied with a _give-'em-hell_ grin. That, Dean didn't take personally. In the time that had passed, he had to admit, Benny had proven that he was trustworthy enough. He wasn't foolish enough to believe that it stemmed from any genuine affection, but Dean was Benny's only way out of here, so there was no way the vamp would betray him.

Dean spun the Obsidian in his hands, scanning the empty trees ahead. They were going to have to sprint it uphill, and even then the chances of taking the nest by surprise were minimal. There wasn't enough cover to sneak up. "Alright, let's do this," he said, breaking into a run. Benny was right behind him, the vampire's lighter footfalls spattered erratically through Dean's steady pace. Sometimes Dean envied that the vampire had so much more stamina than he did, but then he remembered he was in Purgatory and none of it mattered anyway. Here, Dean could go as hard as anyone. Despite the effect not having them had on him, he didn't _need_ sleep or food or water. And on Earth, where he had needed them, he'd forced himself through worse.

By the time they leapt over the crest of the ridge, the nest had spotted their approach. The raiding pair did have some advantage, though – Benny had ensured they were downwind before attacking (insofar as there ever _was_ wind in Purgatory) and so the nest-vamps didn't know who was storming them, only that someone was.

For a minute or two, the vampires fought back, not even slowing down when Dean easily beheaded the two that had greeted him, and Benny killed a further three. The nest had superior numbers, and they were banking on that to win. But after a few more minutes of fighting, it became clear that it wasn't going to go that way; Benny and Dean stood back to back, wielding their respective weapons, and the nest vampires dropped around them until there was a ring of bodies like a wall.

That was when the cry went up. The remaining vampires had realised who they were being attacked by. They circled, shying away, and the ones who still breathed turned to flee them. "After those ones!" Dean grunted, throwing himself over the headless corpses. With naught but a vampiric hiss, Benny took off in the direction Dean had indicated.

The chase was short and brutal. Separated from his hunting partner, Dean bolted over the fallen vampires, chasing down the survivors. One by one, he cut their legs out from under them, the Obsidian slicing through flesh and bone far easier than should have been possible, until he had just one left. By now, Dean had stopped questioning the Purgatory weapon – he guessed obsidian from here was just better than the earthly stuff.

"So," Dean hissed, slamming his current captive against the tree. "Where's the angel?" There was a disappointing lack of venom in its reply. The vampire begged for its pathetic life, insisting that it didn't know anything.

And Dean believed it.

"So you don't know anything," he spat. "Then I guess you're no use to me." When the Obsidian cut its head from its body, sending a hot spray of blood over his cheeks, Dean didn't even flinch. It had been so long since he'd done anything but hunt and kill, it didn't bother him anymore. Once, in the real world, he had thought he was a true Hunter.

He knew better now.

Dean moved leisurely back along his own trail, questioning each crippled bloodsucker as he went, ending them without hesitation when they failed him. A handful of minutes later and the Hunter was left with no more prey. Instead of wait for Benny to return, he started down the direction he'd sent his hunting buddy, and soon enough he found the first of Benny's victims, stomach torn apart but not yet dead.

"Please," it whimpered in a woman's voice, staring up at him with pleading, hazel eyes. In return, Dean gave it a merciless stare; it was a monster. It deserved no consideration, no empathy. It had one use, and one use only.

Crouching down (not kneeling, never kneeling, because risking one's own footing was dangerous and possibly lethal here), Dean touched the tip of his blade to its chin, tilting its head back. "So," he rumbled quietly, "do you know where the angel is?"

"You're the human," it whispered. "You smell like a vampire," it added, a hint of spite creeping into its voice. The deflection – knowing who he was, what would piss him off – made it clear to Dean that she didn't know anything. Back on Earth, he might well have taken offence. Hell, only weeks ago, he would have been offended and angry at the insinuation. But now, he just didn't care; Purgatory did that to you. Dean smelt like a vampire because he was working with a vampire. So what? For a few hours there, he'd even _been_ a vampire.

Leaning closer, Dean flicked the Obsidian over. "That's because I run with one," he said quietly, and slid the blade between its jaw and collar.

It took time, running through the crippled freaks before he reached Benny again. On the way, only several of the bastards were remotely interesting. One, with barely enough breath to speak, had been actually useful – gesturing over the ridge in the direction it thought Cas was before dying.

Benny had struck another one over the chest. It gasped through bloodied lungs, its ribs cracked and exposed through flesh torn to shreds. "Benny really did a number on you," Dean said, smirking as he crouched by the dying creature. "Maybe you pissed him off or something. Tell you what – you tell me where the angel is, and—"

"You're gonna kill me anyway," it hissed, blood bubbling from its lips and lungs, popping over what remained of its torso.

Dean grinned darkly. "No. You're going to die anyway. Tell me what you know and I will kill you – don't, and I'll leave you here for something else to find, and eat alive." The threat was delivered in an even tone, but inside Dean relished the rush of power that came with it. High on the buzz, in a way that nothing else could touch him, Dean leaned in closer and whispered a second part: "If you take too long, I could always show you your own heart."

Flipping the Obsidian to his other hand, Dean squeezed his left hand fingers past the mangled ribcage, taking a demented delight in the harsh cries of pain that the vampire gave him. The bone scraped his skin, but it didn't hurt, not really, and then he felt the silky touch of hard muscle. It throbbed under his fingertips, steady and strong, but slow. He'd expected its pulse to be faster, all things considered, but perhaps it was a Purgatory thing. Didn't matter either way.

Carefully, he wrapped his hand around the vampire's beating heart, both soft and hard against his palm. To be fair, he'd handled live hearts before, when he was learning the art of torture – but the experience never went lacking.

"So. Where's the angel, Valentine?"

Breath scraped past its throat, raw and bloody and somehow… Dean enjoyed it. Knowing that he was the cause of it, of the vampire's distress, its pain, its fear. That he basked in the power wasn't surprising to him; he'd realised long ago that this part of him existed locked away by social and personal constraints on Earth. Here, it didn't matter. Not even a little bit. Here, the Bloody Path was the only one you could walk and survive, and Dean had every intention of surviving.

Why not live a little?

Surrendering to it had been easy. He'd done it in Hell, all that time ago, and just like with sex, the first time was the hardest. Just like sex, he knew what to do now. Easy. Simple. Glorious. "I don't kn—" it tried to speak, and Dean tightened his grip a little, feeling the heavy thud of the frantic heart.

"I don't give second chances. Tell me everything you know, and I might even make this painless for you." It stared up at him, eyes narrowed, and Dean waited for all of two seconds before sighing to himself. "Pity." Slowly, he clenched his hand around the beating heart, contracting his fingers ever tighter, savouring every cry through heightened hearing.

And eventually, it gave out under his strength and fluttered to a standstill. Without loosening his grip, Dean jerked his crimson-stained hand from the monster's chest, ignoring the scrape of shattered ribs and the sting of cuts opening, yanking the dead heart with it. He dropped it on the damp ground, and considered his prey. He honestly wasn't sure if ripping a vampire's heart out would kill them – so as he rose, ignoring the blood dripping from his fingertips, Dean neatly severed its head from its body as insurance, and then he went on his way.

It didn't matter that he'd failed to uphold his threat. The thing had suffered in its final moments, and there wasn't anyone else around to have witnessed his lapse anyway.

Try as he might to convince them otherwise, if the other vampires knew anything about Cas, they were very good at hiding it. After going through several more of them, though, Dean's thoughts turned much closer to home. He should have met up with Benny by now, even allowing for the vampire's slower interrogation techniques. That he hadn't yet was worrying. Even as he killed the next vamp in a surely dwindling line, Dean began to actively look for signs of Benny's progress or presence – there was little he could do about Cas, at the minute, but Benny was a different matter.

It wasn't until he came upon the end of the line that he found Benny, curled against the base of a tree, hamstrung and bleeding. That he was injured at all was bad, but he had one arm glued to his stomach, and there was enough blood there to convince Dean he had a second wound – though whether on his arm or actually to his abdomen, he couldn't yet tell.

Nearby, there was the body of a decapitated vamp, so at least Benny had won the damn fight. "You're getting sloppy," Dean mocked him, flipping the Obsidian in his grip so that it lay flat along his arm, out of the way as he crouched down to inspect Benny's injured leg.

Half-heartedly, Benny gave him a sort of pained smirk. "Yeah, well. 'e took me by surprise. Happens to the best of us," he drawled back, his accent thickening slightly with his evident pain. "You gonna help me up, or jus' stand there lookin' pretty?" Dean grinned back, and was internally caught off guard by the affection in the gesture; after all those weeks, he'd come to enjoy Benny's company in spite of himself. Making sure he was opposite Benny's severed calf muscles, Dean leaned down and hauled the vamp to his feet, and once Benny's good arm was around his neck, gripped his wrist.

The blade of the Obsidian sticking out behind them, Dean wrapped his other arm around Benny's waist and almost dragged his companion back to the heart of the routed nest, settling him in a little alcove formed by the twisted trees. There was an obvious firepit next to it, so clearly a lot of the nest's activities had taken place there.

Clever too, Dean thought, when he got a good look around from that spot. He would be able to see anybody else coming a mile away.

"You gonna be alright?" Dean threw over his shoulder, setting about gathering a modest supply of firewood. "I seen you vamps heal from some pretty nasty shit before," he added, as if the words would force Benny into doing the same.

"Yeah, well… vampire 'n' werewolf blood is fine for easing the thirst, but only human blood gives us that spec'l feelin'," Benny supplied, his voice as careful as possible considering the pain he must be in. A glance over revealed that yes, the second injury was to his stomach, not his arm – not deep, but a thin line of muscle glistened between split skin, under the sliced shirt.

Well, at least it hadn't cut the vampire's overcoat. He was borderline psychotic about that thing. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm the only human around, and you need my ass awake to make sure we don't become monster chow," Dean said, bringing out both his knives, setting the Obsidian on the ground nearby. For some bizarre reason that he wasn't ever going to question, the demonblade had a tendency to spark real decent fire, if he struck them together right. He had to be careful, though – the silver dagger was starting to dull from the abuse.

Benny shrugged. "Guess we're screwed fer now, then," he mumbled. "I ain't getting nowhere like this." He shifted uncomfortably, angling himself around the budding fire better. "Be lucky if I make it three days," he added. Dean knew that the vampire wasn't trying to push anything, not really, but it had just become a matter of survival, and they both knew Benny was willing to stoop to manipulation to get what he wanted. It wasn't as if they hadn't both already done it in the weeks they'd run together.

"What are you suggesting, Benny?" Dean snapped. "That I let you tear open my throat? Then I'd be pretty fucking useless." True, if Benny fed then he would probably be in better shape to keep watch then Dean was now, due to all his extra vampiric senses and whatnot (he'd _been_ a friggin' vampire, he knew how they worked), but it didn't mean he had to like the idea.

Benny shrugged. "'s your choice, broth'r," he muttered, closing his eyes.

The first time Benny had used that particular endearment, Dean had snagged him across one shoulder with the tip of the Obsidian and threatened to take his head off if he ever did it again. Dean only had one brother; two if you counted Adam; three if he counted Cas. But Benny wasn't it, nor would the vampire ever become it. Of course, that had been before they'd saved each other's lives a dozen times either way.

Now, Dean bore it like he'd borne all accusations of devil-worship. They had walked down this path long enough together to be blood brothers anyway – if not in the generally understood definition.

Muttering curses to himself the entire time, Dean stood, swept his gaze around the ridge, and walked to Benny's side, crouching beside him. Some part of him, the part of him that had never given into his darkest side, was freaking at the absurd course of action he was about to take. What the fuck did he think he was doing? Saving a vampire was bad enough, but saving him by letting him feed? What the fuck kind of logic was that? Where had his thinking got to?

The rest of him admitted that he needed Benny, and a little slice of his brain even admitted that he liked Benny, and would rather not see him die. Dean always had been a bit of a compulsive martyr; he could admit that here, where it didn't matter. Still, motherfucking vampires…

He dragged up one sleeve, holding the silver dagger over the skin of his forearm. "If you kill me, Benny, I swear that blade is going straight up your ass," he threatened, gesturing to the Obsidian where it lay on the ground, though the venom in his tone was lost to the spinning in his head as he registered how crazy he must be right now. Honestly, it kind of felt like a dream, in a way that nothing else in Purgatory did. Maybe he unconsciously welcomed the change in his perception, though why he would when dreams had only ever meant torture for him was way beyond him.

Maybe he really had just lost it.

Either way, he wasn't about to let Benny die, even if it meant _this_. "Tha's not really necessary, broth'r," Benny said quietly, eyeing the blade. Dean knew that. Of course he did. There was just something in him that would rather he at least do the initial damage, if only to let him think he had some semblance of control over the situation.

Whether Dean liked Benny or not, the matter boiled down to the fact that Dean needed Benny, and right now, this was the only viable way out of this dangerous situation. Injured to the degree he was, Benny couldn't continue their quest, and Dean couldn't risk leaving him behind to find Cas, because he needed the vamp to find the portal. Sometimes, a Hunter gotta do what a Hunter gotta do. It didn't make the idea any less off-putting, but Dean took comfort (as the silver blade cut into his skin and a little stream of crimson bled forth) in the fact that he'd probably done worse.

For some reason, the extension of Benny's jagged, needle-like fangs took Dean off guard. It wasn't as if he'd expected the vamp to be able to help it, wounded and with human blood – which he hadn't tasted since his death at least fifty years ago – so nearby, especially since Dean was literally offering it to him. But the sudden reminder still made him hesitate, freezing up for half a second in conflict.

In the vampire's defence, he looked away as they broke through his gums, seeming almost ashamed of the reaction. Perhaps, if he'd been telling the truth and really had been off live blood by the time he got _here_, he legitimately was. As it was, Benny refused to meet Dean's gaze after that.

Dean forced himself to accept that there was just no way this was going down without the fangs. It would probably make a huge mess of his arm, which would be awful, and short of turning him, Benny could do nothing about it (and could he even be turned here? They were, technically, just souls) but he'd fought through far worse injuries. Hell, the stupid gorilla wolf freaks had done worse on his first night here, and he'd beaten those suckers hard.

"Hurry up, before I change my mind," Dean grunted, casting wary eyes around them again. He wasn't prepared for the burn of Benny's fangs as they slid into his flesh around the cut he'd made, nor for the sting of the forced bloodflow. At least they slid in a lot cleaner than he had imagined, not inflicting nearly as much damage as he'd been prepared to handle. Benny was more careful than he'd given him credit for, holding his teeth utterly still in the Hunter's arm.

For a full minute, they stayed like that, completely still except Benny's slow swallow, and Dean's grinding teeth. It wasn't even the bite that bothered him, not after the first six seconds – but he'd never expected that having his blood drunk would hurt so fucking much. It ached numbly when Benny swallowed, but every time he drew a new mouthful from Dean's veins, the sharp pain shot through his arm.

He'd experienced worse (Dean honestly doubted that anything could ever top the pain he'd experienced at Alistair's hands), but the fact of the matter was he wasn't experiencing worse _now_, and having a vampire drink his blood hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

Finally, he flinched. Immediately, Benny froze, and then slowly drew his teeth away from Dean's arm, leaving his skin bloody and punched full of holes; two neat curves of them. Very abruptly, dizziness took over Dean's head and he swayed, vision blurring into a swirl of greyscale. When the vampire had been drinking, all the Hunter had felt was pain, but now he felt oddly removed, as if his body was full of helium.

There weren't butterflies in Purgatory, were there? Nah, butterflies didn't glow. So his sight was full of phantom lights then – well that couldn't be good. "Easy, broth'r," Benny muttered, catching Dean as he fell sideways. "I'm sorry, Dean. Didn't mean to take so much, but y'know how it is…" Blinking slowly, Dean just nodded his acceptance – for the life of him, he couldn't see how that was a bad thing right now. Benny hadn't meant it, he'd just said; and besides, if the vamp was gonna be ok, he supposed it was worth a bit of dizziness and flickering vision.

Then, for a while, there wasn't even that.

When Dean regained consciousness, it took him a few minutes to figure out what was happening. Of course, he _would_ wake up to the sound of animal screaming, but then, why was that again? He forgot about the howls that had woken him, just for a second, when he felt the pain in his right arm, throbbing with his ever-rapid heartbeat. Hissing to himself, he tried to sit up, his muscles trembling slightly. He was met with no resistance, and when he looked towards the source of the obnoxious sounds, he understood why.

In a flash, everything came back to him, and he understood why he was lying on the cold hard ground, feeling weak and sore with a vampire watching his back. On the other side of the firepit (which had been maintained at a flame warm enough for him to feel, but small enough to hide), Benny was grappling with a large dog – perhaps a husky. Maybe a small wolf.

The dog was losing.

Even as it squealed, Benny pinned it down and let out a low snarl; the noise was so inhuman that Dean felt something in his brain flip its shit, denying that something that looked so human could be so utterly _not_. It was the tiny part of him that still remained from those four glorious years he had spent in ignorant bliss, the part of him that usually overwhelmed other people. The rest of him knew that Benny was anything but human, no matter what he'd been born, and was surprised that the knowledge felt good.

The dog went silent when Benny buried his fangs in its throat, its shape snapping back into that of a human, and its foot twitched. With a final, soft sigh, the shapeshifter died and Benny pulled back from it. The glimpse of its torn flesh told Dean why he'd been so surprised that the vamp hadn't made more of a mess of his arm; it was shredded by the struggle, artery steadily leaking without a pulse to fuel its squirts, and threads of skin and muscle hung from the wound like drool from a monster's mouth. Dean was inexplicably grateful.

"Glad you didn't do that to me," he tossed out, forcing himself to his feet. He called bullshit immediately, not just because he swayed on the spot, but because Benny was right there (faster than he'd ever moved before), steadying him with a hand on the shoulder.

Teeth fully retracted, Benny grinned slightly, though dribbles of blood still stained his lips and chin. "Easy, Dean. You've only been out fer twen'y minutes."

Dean _looked_ at him.

"Only twenty minutes," he repeated flatly, patting Benny's hand to show he was alright to stand on his own. "Well, you seem fine." The vamp shrugged, but he stayed nearby despite releasing the human. "Good thing, too – we got shit to do."

This time, Benny stopped him by giving a little chuckle. "Yeah, like stayin' here. You ain't good f'r 'nything like that, Dean. Give it a day." Not a look so much, this time, more of a glare. Dean tolerated Benny's persistent use of 'brother' because they'd looked after each other's backs too long for him not to – as just evidenced by this latest clusterfuck that had become so every-day-occurrence to the Hunter that he almost wasn't bothered by it. Sure, he'd let a vampire feed on him so he could heal, and then the same vamp had eaten a shapeshifter to prevent it from eating _him_. Whatever.

No biggie, right?

For a moment, Dean paused, admitting how broken his life (_un_life) was. If Sammy had seen a vision of _this_, Dean probably would have locked him in the panic room again.

"One of those vamps gave us a direction, Benny," he finally snapped. "We gotta follow it."

It was a sign of the same camaraderie Dean had come to accept that Benny picked up the Mangler and the Obsidian, kicked out the fire, and followed the human before he protested again. "I told you, chief; findin' that angel ain't a good plan. Hell only knows if the portal won't kill 'im – he ain't got a soul, right?"

Dean ignored the vampire, cradling his arm against his chest – though he did accept the Obsidian, the weight somewhat uncomfortable in his left hand. At first, they had fought over it constantly, but Dean had learned to ignore Benny when he complained about Cas. Most of the time, anyway. It worked now like it always did: Benny started to mutter nonsense under his breath, and Dean pretended that the vamp's childishness didn't amuse him.

It was safer that way anyway, and they both knew it. This way, they didn't make much noise, and Dean didn't get distracted by something as trivial as laughter. Eventually, as he always did, Benny went silent, following Dean's lead with quiet steps and calculating eyes.

"Here," he said finally, when the sky was starting to lighten and the air was beginning to heat. Gesturing off with the Mangler, Benny indicated a nearby stream he had decided they should stop by. Dean stopped, but he didn't move towards it, instead giving him a sharp glance.

"It's nowhere near full daylight yet," he objected, sparing the dark grey sky a look. Normally they'd continue right through until the hottest part of the day – although, the somewhat biased terms were rather inaccurate to describe the stifling heat or the dusty gloom that was a little lighter than the nighttime murk. "We keep going."

Benny chuckled his sarcastic chuckle, which as good as let Dean know that they were either going to stop, or he was leaving the vampire behind. _Awesome_, he thought sardonically, turning back to face his companion. "Seriously? You're going to do this now? You know, I'm not gonna let Cas _smite_ you just cause your face is a disaster," Dean added, throwing that out there. Just for the record – since he'd never specifically exactly said _why_ he was so intent on finding the angel.

This time, Benny just gave him a half-smirk, indicating he was truly amused by the idea. "Nah, tha's not it. But if you ain't gonna take a break, then we gotta at least bind that bite," he said firmly, pale blue eyes flickering towards the wound that still throbbed on Dean's arm. Now that attention had been called to it, the pain forefront in Dean's mind, it hurt all the more. Yeah, that was awesome. Fan-tucking-fastic.

"Fine," Dean muttered, falling into position while Benny took point. They kept their senses strained as they approached the running water – any kind of water source attracted _things_, but running water even more so. And with the Hunter injured, they were doubly vulnerable.

It was only walking behind Benny now that Dean noticed the vamp was still limping a bit on the leg that had been hamstrung. Not enough that it would slow him down significantly, but it was a weakness where there otherwise wouldn't be, and it was pronounced enough to tell Dean two things: firstly, there was still damage to the muscles themselves that hadn't healed, even if the surface was clean; and secondly, the walking they had done had worsened the whole affair.

Gesturing towards it even though Benny couldn't see, Dean cleared his throat slightly to make sure Benny knew he wasn't alerting him to a threat when he spoke. "You're still not in tip top shape, you idiot," he said, voice scolding. "You should have said something."

The only response was a raised eyebrow, tossed casually over shoulder, and an ironic snort. Well, perhaps he was being hypocritical – but _Dean_ could handle himself, dammit, injured or not.

"Sit," Benny ordered once they had met the water and ensured there was no one else nearby. Reluctantly, Den obeyed, eyeing the vampire. To be honest, when Benny had said that the bite had to be _bound_, he'd expected a strip of torn cloth; it was what they used most often to bind open wounds, when they were minor enough to not warrant stopping. The major ones usually meant they found a cave or something and holed up tight, traps and everything. (And that had only happened once, and there had been at least twenty of the bastards, alright?)

So it was with a respectable amount of surprise that Dean watched Benny slip into the water and gather moss from the rocks, layering the strips on top of each other. "You making a salad?" Dean quipped questioningly, staring at his hunting buddy.

He chuckled once again. "Funny; you're cute. I've done this before, just sit there. It'll work, trust me."

It took quite a bit of self-control, but Dean managed _not_ to bring up the First Rule of Purgatory for the millionth time. Instead, he lay his arm across his knees and shifted his weight – he was very decidedly _not_ sitting, just crouching on the balls of his feet in case he had to fight, or run. Shit like sitting got you killed.

Sudden as lightning, the thought struck Dean that if they ever actually managed to find Cas and find the portal and get through it in one piece, he was going to suck at the real world.

Several minutes later, Benny came back ashore with a large handful of moss, dripping with the icy water, but quite clean. That there was moss at all was actually rather shocking, all things considered, so Dean counted it as perfectly acceptable that it had nothing else growing in it. Purgatory was just like that. Despite all that, the biggest surprise of the day came when Benny crouched by Dean, balanced the dripping moss on his knee, and tore a length of dark fabric from the hem of his overcoat.

"Whoa," Dean protested too late.

Benny silenced him with a look, but otherwise ignored him. "Alrigh', now it'll be cold, but you're good fer that," he warned, and squeezed the moss over Dean's arm, after insisting it be held out. The shock of ice water made the human hiss, but it was far from unpleasant. It felt rather nice over the painful heat of punctured flesh. Streams of red-pink water trickled to the ground from Dean's skin, all the not-quite-clotted blood coming loose.

He got no warning for when the moss was folded in half and pressed against the injury, still wet enough to cause more rivulets of liquid to spring forth. It stung, the scrape against raw muscle, but it could be worse – it could always be worse.

There was a surprising amount of care in Benny's movements now, wrapping the length of overcoat over the moss and around Dean's arm, keeping it tight but not tourniquet-tight, tying it off. There was a big difference between saving someone's life because you needed them and stitching up their wounds, even if the wound was halfway your fault and the stitching was metaphorical. For now, Dean didn't dwell on it, because as soon as they were done here they had to keep moving, regardless of how hurt they were (or weren't), but he took it to heart.

When the vampire was done, Dean got to his feet and flexed his arm lightly. As expected, he couldn't bear the Obsidian with it and he'd have to be careful, or risk screwing himself with a proverbial cactus, but the pressure did make it feel halfway better.

"Thanks," he mumbled, and took point to lead on. Benny didn't reply, but he fell into rearguard without complaint.


	8. Lapse in Time or Judgement

**Ok, so Vah-leh-rah is the cutest fucking thing - I don't even know.**

**Everybody shoutout to Molly-Myles for being freaking amazing - and go give her stuff some love. (Especially Ride The Lightning, so she'll finish it -wink-)**

**Dedicated to: Charlie Bradbury for being fucking awesome (well, Felicia Day) - or, as I like to call her, the little Winchester.**

* * *

To touch another's Grace with one's own was a peculiar experience. Grace was pure divine energy, a force in its own right – like gravity, or time. Just as they could manipulate both gravity and time, an angel's Grace was theirs to control, a part of themselves as fundamental and essential as a mortal's soul. When it chanced to touch another Grace, the contact was like two wind currents, kissing and sweeping on.

The water felt almost the same against Castiel's skin. He couldn't feel the large pebbles under his back anymore, and his feet bobbed gently in the stream, but the water itself was soft, gentle – feathering his skin. It wasn't even cold anymore.

If only the same could be said for his wi—

No. Silently, Castiel corrected himself; they were not wings. Not anymore. They were simply sharp threads of crystal, naked and raw where they lay on either side of him. The icy water burned like fresh snow, and it felt as though it had to cut into already bleeding wounds – but it did not. Castiel lay in the stream, staring at the dusk sky, face utterly impassive as the pain jolted through him like frozen lightning.

It was the same stream. He had followed it far away from where he had been when… far away from the nest of enormous black feathers, stiff with blood and Graceless. Upstream he had walked, sometimes run, and not a single soul had he seen.

There was something to be said for bad ideas, in Castiel's opinion.

Blinking, Castiel decided numbly that it was time to move again. In the almost four weeks that had passed since his—he didn't have a word sufficient for the event—his self-mutilation—Castiel had covered not half as much ground as he would have liked, as he should have. But the matter wasn't of enough import to worry his mind, for no soul had dared approach him, and no Leviathan had found him yet. He took almost a satisfaction in the thought; if he was to be crippled, at the very least it had worked.

It had taken several days for him to realise that he could no longer sense the presence of the monsters around him. For those first few hours, he had been suffocated by the pain and the shock – it reminded him of the way everything had seemed muffled when he had appropriated Sam's madness, and though he knew that the similarity should worry him (perhaps even frighten him), Castiel wasn't concerned. Now, more than ever, he treasured the dimness of his mind, the lack of feeling in his body. It made the sting of hot air against his bloody crystal more bearable.

One of Heaven's greatest tortures was that of forced flow. That is, not the caress but the invasion of foreign Grace into one's own, eating through the form and wings. Only once had Castiel experienced forced flow, and never had he delivered it. There was no way to truly compare the pains of a seraphic form to those of physical form, but if Castiel had been forced to, he would have compared forced flow to this. Having wings stripped to nothing, the evidence not yet fully faded from the sleeves of his attire.

It must have had the desired effect, Castiel mused on occasion. He could feel his Grace still, a hot cube lodged uncomfortably in his sternum, but it did not swell around him or ripple under his skin. Castiel had not yet tried to access his power, for lack of reason, but now that he was not required to control it, he missed it.

Even here, the stifling days and frigid nights had been of little discomfort to the angel, his vessel regulated by the constant tide of his Grace. Ever since locking it away, he had suffered the temperature fluctuations just as he knew that Dean was…

Dean.

So much emotion, so many memories, all spoken in one syllable. Perhaps Castiel did speak it aloud, for he later registered that a sound had been made in response; but the time was a blur of pain and heat and ice, lost in the endless walking. If something had made itself known, Castiel felt he would have smote it. But he just couldn't remember.

When Castiel became aware of his surroundings once again, he didn't honestly know if hours had passed or days. He paused, turning his head to look down at the stream that stayed beside him like an old friend, and considered it. On his back he could feel the trench coat getting heavy with the blood that never stopped oozing from the shards of crystal that hovered behind him, and he made an executive decision. Once again, it was time to wash away all thought in the frozen stream.

The change in temperature from the air to the water should have made Castiel gasp when he first stepped in. It should have soothed him and woken him, set him shivering. But he waded to the middle of the current, sat down with a quiet splash and lay back, letting the liquid flow around his body and break over his face.

Briefly, when his not-wings were submerged and agony tore through fresh-old wounds, Castiel's mind quickened and he knew that he needed to banish the static gathering in his thoughts like cobwebs. But then he gasped in liquid and dissolved into coughing and by the time that he had righted his breathing, the water enveloped him once more in an embrace like familiar Grace.

For a long time he stayed there, staring at the sky.

Eventually, it occurred to him to find out how long had passed, not-wings singing their anguish in the water. Looking into himself, Castiel found his internal clock and evaluated how much time had slipped by him this time. The answer was not as worrying as it should have been, and yet it was pleasing in comparison to his record. Only seventy-six hours had passed in catatonia; the blackouts (if indeed they could be called that) were getting shorter, less frequent.

Some part of him recognised that it was a good sign. It was that same part that urged him to rise, to get out of the water and not give up his quest, to keep going. Most of him either didn't understand or didn't care, and Castiel honestly couldn't say that he minded not caring. If he didn't have to care, then he didn't have to feel fear or guilt or pain anymore.

The only thing that was real was the stinging in his wi— …crystal.

Castiel didn't get up this time. His vessel had faded into flesh of the void, the stripped crystal bound by excruciating liquid bonds. There was nothing but the pain, and his breathing, and the ever-shifting, flickering sky. He was deaf and numb and thought no thoughts but that of the clouds. They were so interesting, these clouds. Always aged, always engorged, but yet they never paused in their marches to lay down the burden of rain.

They never let the rain fall and yet there was always water, always streams and rivers that wound through this place. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe there was only one river, one endless flow of water that fell down from one cloud, from one mountain top where the clouds all gathered to share their sorrows and weep.

It happened when the clouds were darkening; as the air started to cool and the icy river became colder and colder still. So bitter was the cold that Castiel could no longer feel even the bare threads of crystal; his physical body had frozen, leaving him with nothing but his thoughts and his senses. In a way, it was like how he was without a vessel – emotions swirled through him, but while he could acknowledge and react to them, he could not _feel_ them like mortals did. Emotions so sharp they could inspire laughter or tears, emotions so radiant that they twisted the physical form.

No, he felt like he'd been stripped of his vessel, of faithful Jimmy Novak. Castiel wasn't real anymore, he didn't matter; he was just a cluster of sensory imprints and reactions. The clouds were dark and heavy, sleeping in the darkness. They must be tired from a day spent boiling. There were sounds to be heard, but they were so far away, just on the edge of hearing; Castiel could not sense anything around him, so he might as well be alone.

Then a sound was close, and Castiel looked to see it. He did not turn his head (how could he when he had none?) and he did not move his eyes but his vision tilted and he could see the side of the river. There, settled on the bank, half-hidden in shadows, was a creature that Earth no longer knew. It was small, barely larger than a rabbit, with a long tail that wove through the air like a whip come to life. Covered in tiny black scales, the soul hopped closer to the water, like a sparrow, each motion calculated and precise.

It had little clawed hands, or things that could almost be hands, that balanced its weight when it leant over to drink, and fanning backwards from those limbs were little spines of bone, connected by a thin veil of membrane. They looked like the kind of wings that humans sometimes liked to depict dragons with.

Sharp teeth – tiny – flashed as it lapped up water, tongue flicking out like a cat, drawing the liquid into a thin, reptilian snout. As it sated itself, the creature's eyes darted back and forth, glowing soft white. It shuffled constantly on its powerful, rabbit-like hind legs, the scales melting in and out of the darkness, as if it was ready to flee at any moment.

Somewhere, Castiel felt he knew this creature. He did not have a name for it, beyond a single Enochian sound, just as he had no name for the "gorilla-wolf freaks" that Dean had fought upon arrival, but it was an old monster. Something that, just like the first creatures, just like dragons, had long departed from Earth's existence. The seraph doubted that mortals even had mythology of this creature anymore. But Castiel was older than human mythology, and he knew that he'd seen this monster alive, once.

Mid-swallow, it froze, and the luminescent white eyes met his gaze. Without warning, warm feeling touched what remained of his wings and Castiel hissed in protest, the awareness of his vessel returning like a kick to the stomach. But the little creature that was something like a lizard and something like a rabbit just curled its tail very slowly, and raised its head.

It wasn't looking at Castiel anymore. Glancing sideways, the angel realised belatedly that the hot feeling was the night air, warm only in comparison to the water, assaulting the wounded crystal. Raised to the surface of the water, the current swirled around them, and for a moment, just a second, the thick gloom made it look almost like they were real wings, breaking the river's flow.

Then Castiel sat upright, and realised that he had started to shiver. The crystal shards flexed, sending hot liquid pain down his spine, and he tucked them away for the first time. Settled under his skin with the rest of his true form, in a way that whole wings couldn't be, they felt better.

"_Who_ **are** you?" The creature opened its mouth, displaying three neat rows of tiny fangs – one along the bottom jaw that would slide between the two along the top. It had definitely produced the words, but it didn't move as if it spoke, and the 'voice' was disjointed, like fragments of a radio broadcast pieced together to form a sentence. Then, and only then, did Castiel remember what the creature was.

Their kind had not lived long enough to receive a name beyond their Enochian title, hunted into extinction by the first Hunters. But they had been dangerous enough, and they specialised in mimicking sounds, frequencies, anything. Back then, their typical signature had been to produce a ringing beyond the level of human hearing, but at a frequency that resonated with their hearts and liquefied them. It was all to do with the atomic and sub-atomic bonds that held the cells together. If they still lived today, Castiel had no doubt that manipulating human technology would be high on their identifying techniques.

Even so, they were highly intelligent creatures, and Castiel felt obliged to reply. When he did, he was surprised by how weak his voice was, how broken it came out through the mortal throat. "I am Castiel."

"My _name is_ **Vah-**_**leh**__-rah_, Castiel." For some reason, Castiel had not expected it to have a name. It was not Enochian, but it was very similar – an ancient language derived from the angelic tongue. Vah-leh-rah meant, when translated as smoothly as possible, Bell Of The Midnight Toll.

Even more unnerving was hearing his name spoken back to him in his own voice.

It tilted its head sharply, like a bird. "_You're_ **the angel**." Just like that, Castiel forgot the ache of his stripped wings, and he wasn't jarred by the disjointed nature of Vah-leh-rah's speech. The creature had spoken in Dean's voice; _the angel_.

"You've seen the human," Castiel said to it. If he could have, he may have scrambled to his knees, his feet, gotten closer to the small soul. But his body was stiff, and it was all he could do to turn towards it. "Where?"

A clacking sound emanated from the monster, tapping its three lines of teeth together, and it jumped backwards; they were not showing hostility, and Castiel did not wish to smite it, but they were also in Purgatory. He would have to smite it before they parted. "**Long away**, in _another's_ company. He _searches for __**you**_."

Benny. The name appeared like vapour in Castiel's mind, and though it took him a moment, he remembered. There was something about holding a conversation that focused him, and Castiel found that he had slipped farther than he had thought – a black floodlight filled his thoughts, and pushing it aside in favour of memory sapped his strength. But push it aside he did: Benny was a vampire.

"I have _been here_ **long away**," Vah-leh-rah said suddenly. "_**Leviathan**_ are **long away**. _Your name is_ safe **with me, **Castiel."

And Castiel believed it. Being what it was, the angel already knew that Vah-leh-rah had been in Purgatory longer than it had ever been alive. Earth probably meant nothing to it now. Not everything was as bloodthirsty as a nest of vampires or a pack of werewolves. Vah-leh-rah probably had no interest in the Leviathan – and it would likely not reveal Castiel's location to anyone or anything. Sometimes, you were just too old for devious.

He slowly rose, sparks of pain flaring in his flesh. Every part of his mortal body protested the movement, shrieking for him to just lay back down and stare at the sky. But now he was beyond that – he had pushed aside the floodlight and now hindsight stared him full in the face. As Dean would say: hindsight, thou art truly a bitch.

Well, perhaps he wouldn't say it precisely like that.

"As is yours," Castiel replied, tilting his head slightly. Icy pain flared in his neck, and Castiel winced, but he did not retake the action.

With a dry scrape, Vah-leh-rah leant back on its powerful hind legs and spread its wings, dipping its head. "_Goodbye, _Castiel," it bade, and launched itself off the ground, wide membrane catching the dead air.

"Farewell," Castiel murmured, watching it fly into the cauldron of clouds that was Purgatory's night sky. To be able to fly… Until this moment Castiel had not dwelt on the matter, had not even thought of it – but quite suddenly, he missed the stars. The feeling was sudden and fierce and fiery, burning in his chest just an inch above the uncomfortable presence of his caged Grace. The stars were special, both symbolically and literally. Symbolically, they represented Heaven and all of Castiel's brothers and sisters. Both dead and alive, (smote by him or killed long before) the stars reminded him of their Graces, each individual and shining.

But literally, they stood as sentinels, the twinkling lights that guarded the way to Heaven, and the way out.

He felt the absence of the stars almost as strongly as he felt Dean's absence. For a few minutes, as he finally clambered out of the river and streamed water from his clothes, shivering in the chill air, he contemplated this. Castiel was familiar with the emotions and sensations that accompanied missing any of his friends, but he had been unprepared for _this_.

Yes, he missed Dean's presence, his sarcasm and constant fight-to-the-death attitude, but he had not yet felt this. It was physically painful, accelerating his heartbeat and stinging his eyes in a manner that was not entirely foreign.

It took several minutes more, as he trod upstream, following the logic that he may as well continue onwards, until he came upon a plausible explanation: Castiel couldn't remember the last time he had heard Dean's nightly prayer. Panic descended into his chest, and the angel found that he couldn't breathe. The emptiness that came with the feeling expounded his panic, and he stopped where he stood, shaking. His hands were at his body, clawing at the thin shirt that clung to his skin, although Castiel wasn't entirely certain why he reacted that way. It was unpleasant and painful, and the light-headedness that came with it worried him, but only Jimmy would perish should he suffocate.

A much more urgent question presented itself: Why was he suffocating? Almost as soon as he thought it, Castiel realised he was not suffocating, but rather was suffering from the exact opposite. He was drawing in and expelling air so fast that his lungs did not have the chance to reap the oxygen from his breaths. _Hyperventilating_.

Taking his current emotional and mental state into consideration, there was only one possible explanation for Castiel to hyperventilate. He was having a panic attack. He'd never had one before, and even as he sank down to the ground and frowned, fighting to control himself, Castiel decided that it was not an enjoyable experience. It was not the worst, and it beat a lot of other things he'd felt even just in his time _here_, but he'd never voluntarily go through it.

Soon enough, Castiel found rational thought and took control of his vessel once more, slowing his breathing, allowing his pulse time to regulate. More than likely, Dean had not stopped praying to him at all. Rather, his own catatonia had prevented him from hearing Dean's voice, or feeling the pull of a prayer in his name.

Quickly, shame blossomed under Castiel's skin, burning hot and fuelled by his remaining emotions. It did not matter the trauma he had inflicted on himself (and the angel could not even think about it without feeling nauseas), he had no excuse for how he had reacted. Days, _weeks_ of nothing.

Castiel sighed to himself, looking out over the running water. He was too weak to go very far, he realised; so long of allowing himself to bask in the frigid water, without drinking or sleeping… Without his Grace freely circulating, he was subject to the very mortal danger of temperature, despite that Purgatory prevented any lethal effects. It logically followed that being deprived rest and sustenance would also weaken him.

Thinking thus, Castiel edged closer to the stream until he could reach his hands in, and drank a little. As soon as he did, he realised that he was indeed exceedingly thirsty, but he knew better than to gorge himself; after so long without it, Castiel would be far better off taking only a little at a time.

Semi-sated, the angel stumbled back to a large tree, sank to the base of it and curled up, almost fully out of sight amongst the roots. He would wait, now that he had recovered, and hope that the next evening, Dean would pray. Unforgivable as his reaction had been, Castiel knew he would feel just a smidgen better should he hear Dean's voice and know that in spite of everything, the Hunter was still fighting.


	9. Following Bloody Breadcrumbs

**Hello again! Welcome back to the (not so pleasant) goings on of the Purgatory crew. Prepare thyself for epic Dean Winchester - who honestly sometimes scares the shit out of me, irregardless of that I love the fucker. Anyway, please don't burn my house down? I promise there's a part two to this chapter! Eeep!**

**Beta'd by, and dedicated to, the lovely Molly-Myles. As always, I command everybody to show her the love. Or suffer my wrath. (And by wrath I mean that I'll make the next chapter a Sam chapter and force you all to wait for the amazing threesome to join up. (And get your minds out of the gutter, Chuck.))**

**Enjoy! And Review, dammit.**

* * *

Sharp stinging overtook Dean's face, the point of razor-edged bone slicing into his cheek. Behind him, weight warm and heavy against his back, Benny grunted as he, too, took a hit. Muscles tensed and the vampire's stance shifted where it pressed alongside Dean's, and the human took the cue immediately.

Dropping down, Dean avoided the swing of the Mangler as it sailed above his head, tearing into the fat body of their enemy. It ripped the thing half-open before catching in the wiry blue fur covering its hide, jerked from Benny's grip. Fangs out, the vamp pounced over Dean's back as if they were playing leapfrog, landing squarely on the unnecessarily large and blue monster, hewing into it with teeth and vampiric strength. The same moment Benny was clear, Dean charged in the opposite direction, throwing his weight behind the point of the Obsidian as it sank hilt-deep into the sister of the thing under Benny's teeth.

"I am so not down for this creepy spider shit," Dean grumbled, twisting sharply and trying to ignore the jarring squeal of the enormous spider he was disembowelling. Behind him, he heard another cry, and Benny landed on the ground like a cat, spitting.

"Yeah, you 'n' me both," he replied. "Th'se things taste awf'l."

He couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up, as they turned on the third and final arachnid together. "Maybe Cas'll let you try him. I mean, you already done me," he added, grinning as he sliced two legs off the body and Benny twisted the creatures head with his bare hands.

Once it was done, and Benny had retrieved the Mangler from where it was lodged in the creature's body, they turned and headed straight for the stream. Washing off the blue slime seemed appropriate – and besides, it was starting to sting where it had landed on Dean's bare skin. If those things had acidic blood, Dean was so done.

He went first, since Benny had a vampire's toughness, and a thought struck him while he bobbed his head under the water for seconds at a time, trying to rinse the thick goo out of his hair. "Hey, Benny," he began, rubbing his hands together. "What _would_ happen if you drank angel blood?"

Benny spared him a frown before turning back to guard duty; Mangler held in one hand, Obsidian in the other. "Not a clue," he allowed, and now Dean could hear the smirk. "But maybe your fre'nd'll be willin' to help us find ou'."

Not much hope of that. Either way, Dean had seen what angels could do to people – and not-people. He wasn't too keen to test the idea on Benny, not the least of which was because he was the only one who knew the way to the portal. Dean was genuinely fond of Benny; the vamp was a laugh, in a sarcastic kinda way, and there was only so much death-defying he could do with somebody before a friendship occurred.

He rubbed his arms down, trying to make certain that none of the spider blood remained. As he rose out of the icy running water, the dim light of Purgatory's daytime caught across his right forearm, and the eerily symmetrical scars shone pearly white for half a second.

Three weeks was a long time for something to scar. Nearly four now, but Dean attributed the time it had taken for the moss to come off to something in Benny's spit or something. He was a vampire, right? There had to be something.

Benny took his turn, trading off both weapons to the Hunter. It felt good, being able to hold the Obsidian in his right hand again, though by now he was accustomed to the weight in his left, so the presence of the Mangler was not unwelcome. He dried off soon enough in the heavy heat, though it made his clothes uncomfortable to stand in.

Not five minutes later, Benny splashed out of the water and took his weapon back, spinning it a few times. "I reckon we follow the riv'r fer a while," he suggested, looking off towards what was presumably a noise. "Bett'r 'n walking through them spiders."

Dean wholeheartedly agreed, so they set off up the river, Benny taking point. He'd stopped limping by now, completely healed up, but Dean had noticed that he favoured his left leg anyway. Maybe it was subconscious, muscle memory overriding his perfect health, or maybe he was doing it because Dean still favoured his right arm, deliberately or not. Either way, it was another cause for Dean to worry – and he hardly had a shortage of those, in a place like this.

They trekked onwards for the whole day without incident. Dean didn't trust days where they were met with almost no opposition (the spider things didn't count; they hadn't sought each other out, it had just been a case of wrong place, wrong time), though they were becoming more and more common. The monsters had ceased to hunt him down just because he was human.

Perhaps his legend had grown. Or, more likely, the fuckers had just gotten bored of him. It had been nearly six months by now – the novelty was bound to have worn off.

By the time night set in, they had found a split in the black rock that sometimes lined the riverbanks, settling down back to back; both for warmth, and to prevent anything being able to sneak up on them. Dean knew that they needed to get back into the habit of moving at night and resting in the middle of the day, but they had dropped that while they'd been healing from the nest of vampires, and besides, they'd encountered the spiders before. The creepy bastards weren't hard to fight off, unless they came in droves and swarmed, but they were almost triply abundant in numbers at night, and they both thought best to stay right the fuck out of the way of that.

Once they were through spider territory. Then they'd re-establish their nocturnal side.

"Hey, Cas," Dean began, closing his eyes. He had not stopped praying every night from the first night, and he had no plans to do so, Benny be damned. It wasn't as if the vamp hadn't heard him praying before anyway – hell, Dean was pretty sure Benny had heard every prayer since they'd joined up. It didn't bother him anymore – what did it matter?

"We ran into those creepy spider dicks again. Just three of them, no problem. Benny says they don't make good eating," he quipped, more for the vampire's benefit than the angel's. Against his spine, he felt the short jerk of Benny's snicker. "Following the river at the moment. I don't want to deal with them more than I have to; I mean, you and I both know that they ain't so tough, but shit… Those bone-claw things they got sting."

This time, he felt Benny shift very slightly, and Dean knew that the vampire was silently agreeing. The human's face still stung where he'd taken the swipe, and he knew that Benny had been snagged just under his collar. The damage wasn't sufficient enough that they worried, or even paused to treat the cuts, but they still stung. Maybe there was poison in the spiders' claws; thus far they'd avoided being bitten by the enormous mandibles, just in case. It wasn't really something that Dean wanted to test out.

For a while, Dean paused, just thinking. There was no movement, and he felt himself start to get drowsy. It was all very well staying awake while they trekked or fought, but Dean was running on less than an hour's sleep, and they'd stopped moving. Eyes closed, he mumbled the rest of his prayer. "'m fine. No new injuries. Thinking that we'll make it out of spider territory by the end of the week, hopefully… Not that _that_ means much…" He laughed bitterly, smirking to himself. Time was such an abstract concept here, when every day was the same. Talking about weeks seemed odd, as if he was speaking an old language that he barely knew.

"You m'ke it to the riv'r, we'll find you," Benny broke in. For a moment, Dean looked over his shoulder at the vampire, green eyes open under furrowed brows. Benny had never interrupted Dean's prayers before, let alone weighed in on one. Almost sheepish, Benny shot a glance at the Hunter, meeting his gaze for half a second. Then he shrugged. "I still think i's a bad idea, but Dean's set un findin' you. M'ke it easier un us if you list'n."

For a while, Dean thought about that, wondering if Cas had heard Benny's input, or if the angel cared. It was weird, thinking about a vampire praying to a seraph. Let alone _his_ vampire praying to _his_ seraph.

Shit, when had his life gotten to the point of having supernatural family?

…

Shit, when had the vampire become family?

Dean sighed to himself, and then settled in to get his hour's sleep. Benny could run a lot further on a lot less with half the consequence; it was fact, no matter how much Dean tried to deny it. The vamp could take first watch.

Once Benny was completely still, and when he knew he was slipping into dreamland, Dean decided to murmur one more thing. It was something that he'd been doing lately, trying to command an angel of the Lord just because… well, Cas might be thousands of years old (and Dean quickly skipped on from that, because hell if the thought wasn't unnerving), but he was a frigging child and Dean needed him to listen. Cas was a soldier – giving him orders was the only thing that seemed to work.

"Stay alive, Cas. I'm'na kick your ass if you don't…"

It wasn't darkness that overtook him when he tripped off the edge of wakefulness. Flames rose up to greet him, to carry him into nightmares that he'd never be rid of. The fire welcomed him with a scalding embrace, and hot chains slithered around him like snakes. Their heads were large barbs, like arrowheads.

The inferno and the hissing chains greeted him like old friends, and he was almost comforted by the phantom pain that anointed his dreams when they bit into him. As long as he was having nightmares, he knew he wasn't actually in Hell.

All at once the flames went out and the chains fell headless at his feet, and for a brief moment he wondered if finally, this was the memory of Castiel's rescue. It was something he remembered only as a flash of white-blue light and then the burn of a throat four months dry. Accustomed as he was to the nightmares of Hell, he had always wondered if he would ever dream of the moment he was carried out.

Instead, he was met with the sensation of hands gripping his shoulders too tightly, and a vicious whisper in his ear. "_Dean. Get up, broth'r, we got a hunt un our hands._"

His eyes snapped open and he vaulted silently to his feet, finding the Obsidian in his hand without consciously reaching for it. A quick evaluation of the chill in the air and the ache of his temples told him he'd been asleep for a little under two hours. "_What is it?_" he whispered back, searching the surrounding area without sparing his companion so much as a glance.

It was better he identified the threat level before he risked any distraction.

"_Vampire,_" Benny replied, his voice barely more than a ghost of breath against Dean's ear. "_Two of 'em. Dun know we're here, ye'. Reck'n they might be of assistance._" With a brief nod, Dean rose into a hunting crouch, scanning the trees with all his senses on high alert.

_There_.

The two vamps were picking their way through the stark trees, avoiding long ropes of spidersilk that marked the monsters' territory. Dodging the thick threads and sheets of web was essential; Dean had gotten caught on one during their first day in the 'Spider Kingdom', and it had taken four hours and five dead spiders for Benny to cut him free.

Dean shifted his position, flipping the Obsidian around like a reverse dagger, eyes fixed on the prey. It was strange, how his senses spun around him as he focused. Next to him, Benny coiled his muscles, signalling to his hunting partner that the game was on, and all at once everything snapped into focus. All Dean could hear was the quiet footsteps of the vampires, Benny's gentle breathing. Every time his companion moved, even just a fraction, Dean felt it as if it were his own movement, responding, aligning. When the prey became alert, they hid, and when it relaxed, they stalked.

And they stalked. Dean was all for pouncing them, his nerves alight, eyes unblinking as they glittered with predatory danger, but Benny remained low, silent, still stalking. It wasn't that Dean took his cues from the vampire, but they didn't attack until they were in harmony. Otherwise they risked getting in each other's way, they risked too severe an injury.

This was Purgatory. There was no help on its way. Period. If you were mortally wounded, you were left behind.

It happened when they'd crossed the river. The spiders' territory didn't extend across the water, and the moment they were clear of the gluey webs, Benny's stance changed. His muscles tightened, and his breathing became shallow. There was the wet slide of vampire teeth extending by the Hunter's ear. And then the prey made the last mistake of their lives.

They paused, leaning back against trees.

Benny made a low, threatening sound, and there was a moment where he almost left the ground in attack, but suddenly Dean was struck with how nervous the two vampires looked. One of them fidgeted as it rested; it looked left and right and back again, searching for something. Or someone.

All he had to do was settle. Dean didn't even make to grab Benny's coat – the moment he uncoiled, Benny froze beside him and then settled too, sparing him a confused glance. Unasked questions were answered when the first vampire opened its mouth.

"You think he'll show?" it said quietly, nervous. Sometimes, Dean marvelled that two creatures who had somehow survived this long could possibly be tracked so far without realising it. Then, of course, he always decided that it was because he and Benny were _just that good_. "I mean, he'll show, right? He's gotta show."

The second vamp looked at its companion worriedly. "Yeah, he'll show," it replied in the voice of a woman. "He's got no contact with the Leviathan. He needs us, or he's got no deal."

Dean and Benny stared at each other for a long moment. What in all Nine Hells could possibly merit finding Leviathan snitches? Obviously, these two vamps had lived this long because they had the protection of the Big Blacks, but who the hell would be dumb enough to actually arrange a meeting with them? Had to be one mother of a tip off.

Just as Dean thought that, seeing the same things cross Benny's mind, an answer presented itself. And by the way Benny's pale blue eyes suddenly sparked, he knew that the vampire had thought of it too.

_The angel_.

Minutes passed, full of uncomfortable and impatient fidgeting. Eventually, the first vampire spoke again. "You think he's for real?"

"About the angel?" the other one clarified, raising an eyebrow at the first. "He better be. They're gonna eat him toes first if he's fucking around."

And that was all they needed to know. Two bodies coiled and pounced, rushing the confused and now terrified vampires faster than they could react. To be truthful, Dean wasn't actually that fast (Benny had already beheaded his by the time Dean put the Obsidian against the second vampire's throat), but the stupid monsters just didn't know what to do.

"Thanks," Dean hissed, forcing the blade through the fool's neck. Its head thudded to the ground and Dean turned away dispassionately, frowning thoughtfully. "Do we stick around or try to jump 'him'?" he asked Benny, stowing the Obsidian just long enough so that he could hide the body. No point in alerting the suspected informant.

Doing the same, Benny shrugged. "He'll be expecting a c'uple of snitches, righ'? You smell enough like a vampire to fool 'im. I say we stick aroun'."

Accepting this, Dean made sure that the bodies couldn't be seen and stationed himself at his prey's tree, leaning against it with a renewed sense of infinity. He could wait here forever if need be. Opposite him, Benny crossed his arms and did the same, effecting an identical air.

It was still before daybreak when 'he' showed up.

A werewolf, half wolfed out – eyes red, skin tough and thoroughly scarred. Sharp teeth. Despite the twisted gait with which he walked, he was wickedly silent when he entered the clearing. He looked around, as if expecting an ambush, but was met only with two very carefully blank stares. "You our guy?" Dean growled lowly, trying to remember all the nauseating vampire feelings and bring them out. He was pretending to not be human right now. Think vampire thoughts!

The werewolf looked stricken, red gaze glued to the Hunter, and then he spun on his heel, tensing for flight. He was met with the solid body of Benny the vampire.

_Nice, Winchester,_ Dean mentalised, sighing internally. Didn't fool one little werewolf, even for a moment. Not to worry – Benny was dragging the creature towards a tree, choking it with a chain. It took the amount of time Dean spent following them and helping Benny chain the thing to the tree for him to realise.

"Wait. Where the hell did you get this chain from?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at his friend. But Benny just bared his teeth and chuckled, shrugging.

"Wha'? Came in useful, righ'?"

Dean rolled his eyes. Whatever. Sometimes it was better not to ask. The werewolf clearly knew this principle, because he stayed utterly silent, watching the non-verbal exchanges between the vampire and the human. And very soon those became important, because Dean met Benny's gaze and pointed at the werewolf with the Obsidian, asking.

And Benny shrugged a little and gave him a wicked grin. Good cop, bad cop it was. Dean knew exactly which one he wanted to play.

That in mind, he stood back, watching impassively as Benny conducted a very delicate form of torture on the werewolf, demanding to know where the angel was. If he broke and spilled, that was all very well – Dean would have fun killing him. But if he were honest, he hoped the monster would hold out. He wanted a chance to put the fear of Dean Winchester into him before he died, never mind the fear of God.

Eventually, though day still hadn't broken, Benny rose and stepped back. Dean stopped his vigil, turning around regularly to ensure nothing snuck up on them, attracted by the werewolf's cries, and faced him. The vampire's face held a weary expression, tired and bored by the proceedings. Resigned.

All part of the game.

"I don' think he knows, man," Benny muttered as he approached, just loud enough for the werewolf to hear him. The Mangler was held loosely in his grip, his steps slow and heavy as he shrugged past the human. A soft, sharp sigh escaped his throat as he did; disappointment incarnate.

Resisting the urge to grin, Dean shot Benny a hard glance and then turned cold emerald eyes on the werewolf. The vampire took up his spot in the middle of the clearing, keeping an eye out for danger, and Dean approached the panting werewolf, glee making itself apparent in his glare. Trepidation dominated the prey's body language. He set the blunter edge of the Obsidian against the werewolf's shoulder, letting the point nudge his jaw, and leaned down so that their faces were too close for anybody's comfort.

"Oh, he knows," Dean replied confidently. Thoroughly ignoring Benny now, Dean let the creature squirm for a moment, taking in all the fear in his face, and then snapped out the same question Benny had asked him a thousand times: "Where's the angel?"

It was nearly inflectionless, as if Dean knew he wouldn't get a reply at first. He was hoping he wouldn't. It would be easier if the 'wolf fell for their routine and gave in, afraid of what the 'bad' one might do to him if the 'good' one had been so nasty, but Dean couldn't deny he longed for a nice round of hard torture.

The werewolf stared at him, breathing wetly through a raw throat and broken teeth, and Dean leaned a little closer. Letting the thing look him in the eyes. Letting him see the fury there. The excitement. Then he reached for his waistband and slowly pulled out the demonblade, showing off the jagged edge. The werewolf twitched uncertainly, gaze locking onto the knife, and then Dean rested it along his belly, digging the point into his solar plexus just enough to make him supremely uncomfortable.

"You feel that?" he growled, teeth bared, eyes lighting up. In a moment, the pathetic excuse of a monster met his gaze and Dean knew he'd won. The light went out of his eyes, but it only served to make them cold, like mossy stone.

His voice in pieces, the werewolf managed to slur out the words, "There's a stream." Dean could feel Benny's eyes on them now, taking in every aspect.

"Go on."

"Runs through a clearing not far from here. I'll show you," he offered, and Dean felt like laughing at the faint hope that coloured his voice. How cute. Cute and very, very misguided.

Flicking the point of the demonblade from his abdomen with a sharpness that produced a fearful huff of air (which he adored, he truly did), Dean lifted the dagger to the werewolf's throat, point up. "How 'bout you just tell me?"

The werewolf hesitated again, panic filling his face, accelerating his breathing. Each scrape of air shot over Dean's skin, setting his nerves on fire. _This_ was what torture was about – tasting the fear, luxuriating in the panic and the terror of your prey… This was what made Dean the very best at what he did. He wasn't in it for the pain. He was in it for the _fear_.

"Go on!" he repeated, the growl low and inhuman. Channelling his vampire side. Or perhaps his demonic one.

There must have been something in his face, because the werewolf deflated slowly. "Three days journey," he said, resignation filling his eyes. "Follow the stream. There's a clearing." A pause – short, but too long for Dean's frayed patience, excruciating.

"You'll find your angel there."

Satisfaction took its place. Turning, Dean met Benny's gaze, raising his eyebrows in both question and triumph. Silently admitting it, Benny quirked one eyebrow briefly, the Mangler slung over one shoulder. Assured of their next course of action, Dean decided on his own personal reward for the werewolf.

"You know what, mutt? I believe you."

A quick death.

Smiling bitterly, almost disappointed that he would have no more time with the informant, Dean stabbed upwards, driving the demonblade through the werewolf's jaw and pallet, punching through the weak bottom of his skull. He choked, blood filling the carvings on the blade, and Dean paused to savour each sound of anguish. There wouldn't be nearly enough of them from this fucker.

Behind him, he sensed Benny look away. Down or away, but the vampire took his eyes off him.

Realising this, Dean yanked the blade from the creature's head and turned away quickly, flicking whatever blood had reached his hand off. A quick gesture, and Benny fell into rearguard, letting Dean take point and walk them back towards the river they'd crossed not an hour before.


End file.
